Babbages Calculating Engine (4 results)

Paper Cover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 8pp. 11 x 7 inch. An original complete edition of this weekly magazine. It is over 180 years old & may have light foxing or age discolouration. In the title line I have listed articles or pictures of specific interest in this issue. Most issues contain a mixture of general interest articles usually including visits to famous or exotic places, scientific, topographical, art, etc and some are illustrated with fine woodcuts. It has been disbound from a compilation and is therefore still unfolded and in nice clean condition - no deliberate marks. It will be despatched in a board back envelope.

Hardcover. Condition: Fair. (BABBAGE) Herschel, John Frederick William. "Report On Mr. Babbage's Calculating Engine, Report of the Committee appointed by the council of the Royal Society, to consider the subject referred to in Mr. Stewart's Letter, relative to Mr. Babbage's Calculating Engine, and to report thereupon", in: Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1831, Vol. 7 (New Series), pp. 210-213 in the full volume of 430pp, two folding plates. Philadelphia: Franklin Institute, 1831. 1st Edition. This is a FAIR copy, only, though it could also be a good rebinding copy. This volume has a very domestic paper repair done to the spine and corner, and the front cover is nearly detached. There is also some light moderate foxing. That said, the text is crisp. [++] "John Herschel (1792-1871), distinguished astronomer, was a staunch supporter of the engines. He and Babbage met while undergraduates at Cambridge where they both studied mathematics." They remained lifelong friends: "In a letter to his widow Babbage described Herschel as 'one of the earliest and most valued friends of my life". --Computer History Museum website. [++] Herschel was the Chair of a committee appointed by the Council of the Royal Society, judging the efficacy of the difference engine/computing machine which Babbage was constructing using funds (at this point at about 6,000 pounds) allocated by the society. Herschel's statement and conclusion are as follows: "In judging the adequacy of Mr. Babbage's work to complete the objects for which it was intended, there are two distinct questions--the adequacy of the contrivance, and that of execution. On the former point every explanation has been afforded by Mr. Babbage, and both the drawings and the work executed have been unreservedly subjected to their discussion, and have been such as to excite a well grounded confidence. The movements are combined with all the skill and system which the most experienced workmanship could suggest. Finally taking into consideration all that has already been said, and relying not less on the talent and skill displayed by Mr. Babbage as a mechanician, in the prosecution of this arduous undertaking, for what remains, than on the matured and digested plan and admirable execution of what is to be accomplished, your committee have no hesitation in giving it their opinion, that in the present state of Mr. Babbage's engine, they do regard it as likely to fulfill the expectations entertained by its inventor." .

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. Offprint in self-wraps, folio; pp. [8]. THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE GAINS THE SUPPORT OF DAVY, THE ROYAL SOCIETY, AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. An exceptionally scarce and important document. This is the sole separate printing of the parliamentary record ('Sessional Papers') containing Babbage's celebrated letter to Humphry Davy, as well as the favourable response of the Royal Society. Only one other copy is recorded worldwide, at the University of Illinois; however, the present copy is the only known example to retain its original stab-stitching, i.e. to be offered in the pristine 'as issued' state. Although many calculating machines predate the Difference Engine, Babbage's machine marks a decisive break: Babbage wanted not only to mechanize calculation, but to automate it. Babbage's intention was to improve the compilation and printing of astronomical and other mathematical tables, which were of supreme importance - notably in navigation - and which Babbage and others had found to be riddled with errors. The present document marks the moment when Babbage's Difference Engine went from an inventor's dream to a reality - albeit one only ever partially completed. Having created a model of his Difference Engine in the early 1820s, Babbage sought public support, writing with extensive detail of the project to the most famous scientist in the land - Humphry Davy, then President of the Royal Society. With Davy's backing, the Royal Society's response was decisive: a grant to Babbage was made, and production began in earnest. Babbage's principal engineer was Joseph Clement, a highly skilled machinist responsible for constructing the intricate precision parts required. Over roughly a decade of active development, disagreements over costs, design changes, and workshop arrangements led to tensions between Babbage and Clement, eventually causing the project to stall by the early 1830s. Despite significant progress on components, the engine was never completed during Babbage's lifetime. Nevertheless, the Difference Engine marks a decisive moment in the history of computing. This was the machine that Ada Lovelace became fascinated by shortly after her first meeting with Babbage, and she visited Babbage many times in order to see it in action. Babbage's thinking on the Difference Engine developed through the 1820s and eventually he began to conceive of a general-purpose computing machine, the never-built Analytical Engine, also analysed and even 'programmed' by Lovelace. Nor was the Difference Engine itself a practical failure: a number of machines were made by others, notably Per Georg Scheutz and George B. Grant. Full contents of the present offprint: 1. Copy of a LETTER to Sir HUMPHRY DAVY, Bart. President of the Royal Society, &c. &c. on the application of Machinery to the purpose of Calculating and Printing Mathematical Tables; from CHARLES BABBAGE, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. Lond, and Edin. Member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Secretary of the Astronomical Society of London, and Correspondent of the Philomathic Society of Paris. 2. Copy of a LETTER from GEO. HARRISON, Esq. to Sir H. DAVY, Bart, transmitting to him a Printed Letter (of which No 1. is a copy) forwarded to the Lords of the Treasury by Mr. Babbage. 3. Copy of the REPORT of the ROYAL SOCIETY on the aforegoing Letter of Mr. Babbage. Near fine condition: stab-stitched as issued; docket title printed orthoganally to rear of last sheet; presented in an attractive custom-made folder with silk ties and a paper title to the cover.

Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Company for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman.1834. 8vo. 2 vols bound in one, nos. CXIX and CXX of The Edinburgh Review, April - July 1834. Half brown calf, marbled boards, gilt rules and lettering to spine, marbled; pp. ii,1-262; ii, 263-545 (Babbage on pp.263 - 327), diagrams to text; spine with vertical crack and recently repaired to front hinge, occasional foxing especially to first and last few leavesFirst edition of Volume 59 of The Edinburgh Review. Scarce. Dionysius Lardner's long article on the calculating machine, written with the guidance of Babbage, came after a series of successful lectures that he gave in Edinburgh. It takes the form of a review of seven articles on the machine, including Babbage's own papers of 1822 and the Royal Society's report of 1829. Lardner, editor of the 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopedia, was a well-known speaker and populariser of science, and his adoption of Babbage's cause seemed advantageous to the great mathematician.However, Lardner made a tactical error that meant that the machine did not receive the public funding Babbage sought. In order to make the subject palatable to a general audience, he concentrated on the machine's ability to correct errors in printed mathematical tables. While this was a valid view, and echoed Babbage's own 1822 papers which he wrote just as his project to build the machine was grinding to a halt, it also fatally underplayed the true mathematical potential of the engine to open up new avenues in computation. Lardner's presentation of the machine became the accepted interpretation, and one that was open to attack: "The utility of the Engines as a solution to table making was resoundingly rejected by experts in England and on the Continent: by George Biddell Airy in England, by Nils Selander in Sweden, and by Joseph Leverrier in France. By identifying the value of the Engines as the practical utility of eliminating errors in the production of tables, Lardner forced the Engine's advocates to defend the machine from a position of weakness" (Doron D. Swade, "Automatic Computation: Charles Babbage and Computational Method", The Rutherford Journal).Nevertheless, as a record of the workings of this wonderful machine in a manner intelligible to the general reader, and as a survey of Babbage's thought, this is still a crucial and fascinating paper.