Today in Technology History
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October 18
We've written before about Charles Babbage, the brilliant nineteenth century English mathematician who designed machines that are considered ancestors of today's computers. Despite his lifelong obsession with these machines, he never succeeded in building one.
But other aspects of Babbage's life were less disappointing. He designed a new kind of ophthalmoscope (a device used to look inside the eyeball). He came up with a new signal code for lighthouses, and a new colored lighting system for theaters. And while consulting for Britain's railroads, he invented the cowcatcher -- the pointy metal frame in front of a train that knocks aside any obstructions on the track.
He was also actively involved in Britain's scientific community. He wrote about magnetism, geology, anthropology and astronomy, and he belonged to several scientific societies. He researched glaciers and volcanoes, once even entering the crater of Mt. Vesuvius. He also studied economics and manufacturing, theorizing about factories and the division of labor. For a decade, he held the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge -- a position once held by Isaac Newton and now held by Stephen Hawking -- although Babbage refused to live or teach at the university since he didn't want to abandon work on his mechanical computers.
Babbage was once a darling of London's intellectual society, regularly holding parties at his home. But in time he became a bitter old crank, perhaps because of the disappointment of his mechanical designs. In his last few years, he was best known not for his inventions but for a public crusade to ban organ grinders -- the street musicians with the monkeys. Those nuisances, he said, distracted him during the day and kept him awake with nocturnal harassment. One story, possibly apocryphal, tells that as Babbage lay on his deathbed, a crowd of organ grinders got their revenge by coming to his window to give the grumpy mathematician a noisy and unwelcome send-off.
Babbage died on October 18, 1871, almost making it to his eightieth birthday "in spite of organ-grinding persecutions," according to his obituary in the London Times. His funeral was attended by one friend and three or four relatives -- but no one from the scientific and literary circles which had once welcomed him.
Related link:
According to this page, Babbage once counted 165 noisy street nuisances in an 80-day period.
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