Mistakes in human calculated math tables. Maddening for engineers, insurance people, and astronomer. What if a mechanical machine could be built and a logorithim written that could make and record tables more acturately. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
You all know I am going to love a stamp about a 19th century genious in a smoking jacket. The stamp designers had a little perceptive fun with Charles Babbage by having numbers popping out of his head. They kind of were though and through it you can see the luck that accrues when the best education system since Aristotle is utilized to full effect by a real genious. Makes me wonder if after I am gone and stamp designers having run out of worthy candidates, decide to give me a stamp. How to portray the stories that can be learned from stamp collecting emanating from me.
Todays stamp is issue A393, a 22 pence stamp issued by Great Britain on March 5th, 1991. It was a 4 stamp issue showing scientists and their technology, in this case Charles Babbage, whose mechanical analytical engine was an important forerunner of the computer. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents used.
Charles Babbage was born in 1791 to a wealthy family in London. His extensive education included self study of mathematics but he required tutoring in the Classics to meet the standard of Cambridge University. Nice when there was a standard instead of people just sent there from the colonies with no background as we have seen with so many stamps. See https://the-philatelist.com/2017/12/12/parliament-house-designed-by-the-guy-who-named-himself-president-for-life/ . Once at Cambridge, he found the mathematics teaching below par and so formed an Analytical Society with some fellow math nerds, connections that would serve him well later in life. He was also a member of the extractors club. That sought to extract any of its members if they are committed to a madhouse. That seems to me the one to join. Academia was not compatible with Babbage as he was more interested in research than in teaching.
Babbage ended up writing influential works on actuarial studies and industrial design. In industry he was in favor of breaking up tasks so that the master had more time on what he alone could do. Over time Babbage though automation could take over the rest. That of course works out well for the master but perhaps less so for the rest of us. Indeed Babbage despised the regular person and indeed the manners of the aristocracy, turning down a Barony.
He began studying tables used in engineering, astronomy and insurance, and found a surprising to him number of human calculation mistakes. He conceived of a mechanical machine that would use algorithms and punch cards to make the calculations more accurately. To compose the algorithm, he worked with female mathematician, Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace. He was never quite got his Analytical Engine working, but Babbage’s son sent out copies of the prototypes to prominent people in the field and they were influential on later computers. There is currently a project in Britain to finally build a working copy of his machine, that might be done by 2021. It is sometimes thought of as Babbage’s last laugh that mechanical computation is again being investigated for areas of high radiation or temperature where electronics are not possible. One thing that perhaps would not make him laugh is that two different museums have preserved pieces of his brain on display.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Charles Babbage. It will have to be a short one as Babbage abhorred commoners and their drunkenness. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.