Charles Babbage: And the Engines of Perfection (Oxford Portraits in Science)

Книга Charles Babbage: And the Engines of Perfection Charles Babbage: And the Engines of Perfection Книги Математика Автор: Bruce Collier, James MacLachlan Год издания: 1999 Формат: pdf Издат.:Oxford University Press, USA Страниц: 128 Размер: 1,4 Mb ISBN: 0195089979 Язык: Английский0 (голосов: 0) Оценка:Charles Babbage, "the grandfather of the modern computer," did not live to see even one of his calculating machines at work. A dazzling genius with vision extending far beyond the limitations of the Victorian age, Babbage successfully calculated a table of logarithms during his years at Cambridge University, allowing mathematical calculations to be executed with extreme precision. Only the possibility of human error prevented complete accuracy, and Babbage understood that the only way to attain perfection is to leave the human mind entirely out of the equation. He devoted most of his life and spent most of his private fortune and government stipend trying to improve his difference engines and analytical engines. Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan chronicle Babbage's education and scientific career, his remarkably active social life and long string of personal tragedies, his forays into philosophy and economics, his successes and failures, and the biggest disappointment of his life-- his ingenious inventionswere centuries ahead of the primitive capabilities of Victorian technology.

Charles Babbage, "the grandfather of the modern computer," did not live to see even one of his calculating machines at work. A dazzling genius with vision extending far beyond the limitations of the Victorian age, Babbage successfully calculated a table of logarithms during his years at Cambridge University, allowing mathematical calculations to be executed with extreme precision. Only the possibility of human error prevented complete accuracy, and Babbage understood that the only way to attain perfection is to leave the human mind entirely out of the equation. He devoted most of his life and spent most of his private fortune and government stipend trying to improve his difference engines and analytical engines.
Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan chronicle Babbage's education and scientific career, his remarkably active social life and long string of personal tragedies, his forays into philosophy and economics, his successes and failures, and the biggest disappointment of his life— his ingenious inventions were centuries ahead of the primitive capabilities of Victorian technology.

Traces the life and work of the man whose nineteenth century inventions led to the development of the computer.

Contents 6 Chapter 1: The Making of a Mathematician 10 Chapter 2: In Scientific Circles 21 Sidebar: Logarithms Explained 33 Chapter 3: Inventing the Difference Engine 36 Sidebar: Differences in Sequences of Numbers 40 Sidebar: Early Mechanical Calculators 45 Chapter 4: Reform Is in the Air 50 Sidebar: The Operation of the Jacquard Loom 67 Chapter 5: Inventing the Analytic Engine 74 Chapter 6: Passages in a Philosopher鈥檚 Life 93 Chapter 7: After Babbage 105 Museums and Web Sites Related to Charles Babbage 113 Chronology 116 Further Reading 120 Index 122 A 122 B 122 C 123 D 123 E 123 F 123 G 123 H 123 I 123 J 123 K 123 L 123 M 123 N 124 O 124 P 124 R 124 S 124 T 124 U 124 V 124 W 124