BABBAGE, CHARLES English mathema tician and mechanician, was born at Teignmouth, Devonshire. He was educated at a private school and at St. Peter's college, Cambridge. In the years 1815-17 he contributed three papers on the "Calculus of Functions" to the Philosophical Transactions, and in 1816 was made a fellow of the Royal Society. With Sir John Herschel and George Peacock he sought to raise the stand ard of mathematical instruction in England, and especially endeavoured to supersede the Newtonian by the Leibnitzian nota tion in the infinitesimal calculus. Babbage's attention seems to have been very early drawn to the number and importance of the errors introduced into astronomical and other calculations through inaccuracies in the computation of tables. He contributed to the Royal Society some notices on the relations between notation and mechanism; and in 1822, in a letter to Sir H. Davy, on the appli cation of machinery to the calculation and printing of mathe matical tables, he discussed the principles of a calculating machine, to the construction of which he devoted many years of his life. Government was induced to grant its aid, and he travelled in Europe, examining different systems of machinery; and some of the results of his investigations were published in the admirable little work, Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (18321. The great calculating machine was never completed; the construc tor apparently desired to adopt a new principle when the first specimen was nearly complete, to make it not a difference but an analytical machine, and the government declined to accept the fur ther risk (see CALCULATING MACHINES). From 1828 to 1839 Babbage was Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He contributed largely to several scientific periodicals, and was instrumental in founding the Astronomical (182o) and Statistical (1834) Societies. He only once endeavoured to enter public life when, in 1832, he stood unsuccessfully for the borough of Fins bury. During the later years of his life he resided in London, devoting himself to the construction of machines capable of per forming arithmetical and even algebraical calculations.
His Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864) throws con siderable light upon his somewhat peculiar character. He wrote Tables of Logarithms (1826) ; Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives (1826) ; Decline of Science in England (183o) ; Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837) ; The Exposition of z851 (1851)• See Monthly Notices, Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 32.