Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage KH FRSwas an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage, along with Ada Lovelace, is best remembered for originating the concept of a programmable computer...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth26 December 1791
country science progress
That a country, [England], eminently distinguished for its mechanical and manufacturing ingenuity, should be indifferent to the progress of inquiries which form the highest departments of that knowledge on whose more elementary truths its wealth and rank depend, is a fact which is well deserving the attention of those who shall inquire into the causes that influence the progress of nations.
country art war
The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.
country skills kingdoms
The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages.
country ambition race
Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in accord with more generous feelings, gives to the intellectual labourer reward and honour, in return for services which crown the nation with imperishable renown, and ultimately enrich the human race.
country genius tuscany
Surely, if knowledge is valuable, it can never be good policy in a country far wealthier than Tuscany, to allow a genius like Mr. Dalton's, to be employed in the drudgery of elementary instruction.
country principles influence
That the state of knowledge in any country will exert a directive influence on the general system of instruction adopted in it, is a principle too obvious to require investigation.
country appreciation appreciate
You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it.
commodity consume english-mathematician government judges merit profit
The public, who consume the new commodity or profit by the new invention, are much better judges of its merit than the government can be.
consists effect english-mathematician large machinery presenting
Another contrivance for regulating the effect of machinery consists in a vane or fly, of little weight, but presenting a large surface.
directed effort englishman however mind observe principle propose
Propose to any Englishman any principle or instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it.
born dies minute
Every minute dies a man, And one and one-sixteenth is born
teaching school drawing
Mechanical Notation ... I look upon it as one of the most important additions I have made to human knowledge. It has placed the construction of machinery in the rank of a demonstrative science. The day will arrive when no school of mechanical drawing will be thought complete without teaching it.
order light velocity
Whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the velocity.
order law miracle
Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God's laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature.