This is a list of past revisions of Charles Babbage. Each is preserved exactly as it was last seen, which is to say approximately, and not necessarily here. Diffs are unavailable; the two versions could not be brought to the same location at the same time.
cur | prev2026NotTheMudGeometer(talk | contribs). . (3,725 bytes)(+45). . (HE NEVER FINNISHED ONE SINGLE MASHINE AND YOU HAVE HIM DOWN AS INVENTING THE COMPUTER. I HAVE NEVER FINNISHED A BARN AND NO ONE CALLS ME A ARCHITECT)(current)
cur | prev2026an editor(talk | contribs). . (3,680 bytes)(+140). . (→ separated the seventeen thousand pounds of public money from the six to seventeen thousand the obituary says he spent of his own. they are different figures and they meet at the top, which is how they came to be one figure everywhere else)
cur | prev2026an editor(talk | contribs). . (3,540 bytes)(+170). . (→ the small plate in the 1853 drawing of the trial portion is lettered CALCULATION COMPLETE. leaving that in the caption without comment, the comment being unnecessary)
cur | prev1991an editor(talk | contribs). . (3,370 bytes)(+240). . (→ the Science Museum has built the second difference engine off his drawings, to the tolerances of his own century so that the answer would mean something, and it works to thirty-one digits. the design was sound the whole time and nobody had thought the question worth the money until the bicentenary made it a nice gesture)
cur | prevOctober 1871a nephew(talk | contribs). . (3,130 bytes)(+70) m . . (→ 1791. the register at Newington has the birth on the 26th of December 1791 and the baptism in the January following, and I have written to the editor to say so)
cur | prevOctober 1871the Times(talk | contribs). . (3,060 bytes)(+260). . (→ THE LATE MR. CHARLES BABBAGE, F.R.S. one of the most active and original of original thinkers, dead at an age, spite of organ-grinding persecutors, little short of 80 years. born 26 December 1792)
cur | prev1864C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (2,800 bytes)(+220). . (→ on a careful retrospect of the last dozen years of my life I speak within limit when I state that one-fourth part of my working power has been destroyed by the nuisance against which I have protested. twelve years, and I put it low)
cur | prev1864C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (2,580 bytes)(+190). . (→ setting down, since I am asked how the thing was received: on two occasions I have been asked, pray Mr Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures will the right answers come out. one was of the Upper House and one of the Lower. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question)
cur | prev1863F. Kasiski(talk | contribs). . (2,390 bytes)(+120). . (→ published the solution. I did not know it had been found and there was no way I could have known)
cur | prev1854C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (2,270 bytes)(+180). . (→ have broken Vigenere's cipher, which has stood three hundred years. it is wartime and I am asked to say nothing, so nothing is what this entry says)
cur | prev1850the Mud Geometer(talk | contribs). . (2,090 bytes)(+50). . (A MASHINE THAT ADS UP IS NOT THINKING. MY HANDS AD UP AND NO ONE CALLS THEM A PHILOSOPHER)
cur | prev1843an editor(talk | contribs). . (2,040 bytes)(+130). . (→ the engine and some four or five hundred drawings to King's College, where they will bear silent witness to great hopes dashed down to the ground)
cur | prev1842H. Goulburn(talk | contribs). . (1,910 bytes)(+210). . (→ the Treasury will spend no more. seventeen thousand pounds and a fragment. Mr Babbage is offered the portion already made, by way of compensation, and has declined it, which we did not expect and do not propose to argue with)
cur | prev1839an editor(talk | contribs). . (1,700 bytes)(+80) m . . (→ has resigned the Lucasian chair after eleven years. lectures delivered in that time: none. the intention of 1831 is still on the record above and may stay there)
cur | prev1834C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (1,620 bytes)(+360). . (→ the new engine is not a larger difference engine. it has a store and a mill, it takes its instructions on cards, and it can be told to do a thing again, or to do one thing rather than another according to what it has just found. I am aware this makes the first engine look small and I am not going back to it)
cur | prev1833J. Clement(talk | contribs). . (1,260 bytes)(+200). . (→ withdrawn my men from the work and taken the tools with me, which are mine by the custom of the trade whoever paid for them. the engine stops where it stands)
cur | prev1828C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (1,060 bytes)(+150). . (→ elected to the Lucasian chair, Newton's. I intend to lecture)
cur | prev14 June 1822C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (910 bytes)(+340). . (→ announced to the Astronomical Society a small engine of two orders of differences. it gives the squares, the triangular numbers, and the values of x squared plus x plus forty-one, and it does not tire and does not misread its own handwriting, which is the entire argument)
cur | prev1821C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (570 bytes)(+200). . (→ spent an evening with Herschel comparing two computations of the same astronomical tables and finding them disagree in place after place. I said I wished to God these calculations had been executed by steam. he said it was quite possible, which is the remark this whole page comes out of)
cur | prev1814an editor(talk | contribs). . (370 bytes)(+90) m . . (→ took the degree from Peterhouse without honours, preferring to be Captain of the Poll, Herschel having the Senior Wranglership in hand)
cur | prev1812C. Babbage(talk | contribs). . (280 bytes)(+280). . (created page; founded a society with Herschel and Peacock for the purpose of putting Leibniz's notation into this University in place of Newton's dots. we are for pure D-ism against the Dot-age of Cambridge and I will not apologise for the pun)
Older revisions exist but have not been located. The page is believed to retain a full history; it is simply not all in one place.
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