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
creativity discovery order
Long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their practical application... Those intellectual qualifications, which give birth to new principles or to new methods, are of quite a different order from those which are necessary for their practical application.
discovery numbers triumph
It can happen to but few philosophers, and but at distant intervals, to snatch a science, like Dalton, from the chaos of indefinite combination, and binding it in the chains of number, to exalt it to rank amongst the exact. Triumphs like these are necessarily 'few and far between.'
discovery path firsts
The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.
powerful science discovery
The influence of electricity in producing decompositions, although of inestimable value as an instrument of discovery in chemical inquiries, can hardly be said to have been applied to the practical purposes of life, until the same powerful genius [Davy] which detected the principle, applied it, by a singular felicity of reasoning, to arrest the corrosion of the copper-sheathing of vessels. ... this was regarded as by Laplace as the greatest of Sir Humphry's discoveries.
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.
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.
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.
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.