Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871) lived just outside of London and was the child of a wealthy Banker. According to Ann Lamont: “Charles began school in Devon. His subjects included mathematics for simple navigation and accounting. This was the beginning of the interest that was to shape his career. Incorrect calculations in navigation often caused shipwrecks. Charles devoted much of his working life to developing machines that would accurately calculate and print mathematical and astronomical tables so that errors could be eliminated.”1
Charles’ mathematical abilities became obvious as he attended school and he loved the subject so much that he spent a large amount of his personal time reading and studying mathematics books. His scientific vision was far ahead of its time and despite his many bouts with ill health he was a prodigious inventor. Henry Morris gives us a nice snapshot of his career: “Primarily a mathematician, he worked on what we now would denote ‘operations research.’ He developed the first actuarial tables, invented the first speedometer, and the first skeleton keys, as well as the first ophthalmoscope and the first locomotive ‘cowcatcher.’ His most important work, however, was in the development of the first true computers, including the use of punched-card directions and information storage and retrieval systems.”2
Perhaps his greatest invention was a mechanical calculator which he called a “difference engine.” Babbage knew that many of the hand-calculated mathematical tables used during his day in navigation and other sciences contained errors so he built his difference engine to automatically calculate and print mathematical tables, thus removing human error. And in an even more ambitious endeavor Babbage tried to develop a vastly superior machine that he called an “analytical engine.” Although he would spend 50 years and a vast sum of money working on this project he never completed this machine. However, it would go on to be the precursor to the modern computer. Even though he never completed his analytical engine he showed his Christian character when he said: “If it is the will of that Being who gave me the endowments which led to the discovery of the analytical engine that I should not live to complete my work, I bow to that decision with intense gratitude for those gifts.”3
Babbage indeed was a true scientific visionary. According to Lamont: “Not only did Babbage conceive the forerunner of today’s computer hardware (the machinery), but he also conceived the necessity for a program (which is how today’s computer software functions). Babbage’s conception of how programs would be written closely resembles the techniques used in modern computer programming.”4
As a Christian, Babbage wrote the ninth and last of the Bridgewater Treaties. These were apologetic essays on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God. His essay included a mathematical analysis of the miracles of the Bible. Baggage was a strong believer in the compatibility of science and Christianity. One of Baggage’s biographers, H. W. Buxton, summed up his beliefs on this subject: “…the study of the works of nature with scientific precision, was a necessary and indispensable preparation to the understanding and interpreting their testimony of the wisdom and goodness of their Divine Author.”5
Charles Babbage was a great man of integrity. He was a visionary, a scientist, an inventor, but first and foremost a committed Christian.
1 Great Creation Scientists: Charles Babbage (1791–1871) | Answers in Genesis
2 Henry M. Morris, Men of Science: Men of God (El Cajon, California: Master Books, 1988), p. 41.
3 John Hudson Tiner, For Those Who Dare (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, Inc. 2002), p. 152.
4 Great Creation Scientists: Charles Babbage (1791–1871) | Answers in Genesis
5 Great Creation Scientists: Charles Babbage (1791–1871) | Answers in Genesis