BAB'BAGE, CIIARLES, b. in 1790, entered early at Trinity college, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.A. in 1814. In 1828, he was elected professor of mathematics in his own university, an office which he filled for 11 years. B. united, in the most happy combination, powers of invention and observation with thorough scientific culture. Among his writings, we notice first his extremely correct and well-arranged Tables of Logarithms (Loud. 1834). He was the first to make the method of constructing such tables the object of earnest study. The difficulty of securing accuracy in getting up tables on a large scale, led him to the idea of committing the execution of the work to a machine. commissioned by the government to superintend the construction of such a machine, before beginning the work, he visited a great many manufactories and machine establishments, both in Britain and on the continent,. in order to become acquainted with all the resources of mechanical art, and thus be in a position to make a combined use of them in his great undertaking. This survey afforded him the neces
sary information for his able work, On time .&onamy .of Manufactures and Machinery (Lond. 1882)—a book which has run through several editions, and been translated into several languages—in which all mechanical processes are classified from the most scien tific point of view, and the most interesting examples of the more important kinds of manufacture are described. Besides his Comparatire Flew of the Different Life-assurance Societies, his Differential and Integral Calculus, his Decline of Science (1830), A .iVinth _Bridgewater Treatise, and The Erposition of 1851 (1851), B. contributed a number of very inercsting papers to the Transactions of the royal societies of London and Edinburgh.— With regard to B.'s calculating machine, which, from some cause not well explained, was never completed, see CALCULATING MAcnINE. He died Oct. 18, 1871.