Letter to Humphry Davy on the Application of Machinery for Calculations

BABBAGE, Charles (1791-1871). A Letter to Sir Humphry Davy ... on the Application of Machinery to the Purpose of Calculating and Printing Mathematical Tables . London: printed by R. and A. Taylor for J. Booth and Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1822. The first public statement of Babbage's plans for his calculating engine. First edition, the Tomash copy. "I am aware that the statements contained in this Letter may perhaps be viewed as something more than Utopian..." (p.11). In the early 1820s Babbage, frustrated by "the intolerable labour and fatiguing monotony of a continued repetition of similar arithmetical calculations" (p. 1), came up with the plan of designing a machine capable of performing various mathematical functions. By 1822 Babbage had constructed a model of his Difference Engine Number One, a special-purpose calculating machine far more complex than any that had previously been conceived, designed to compute mathematical tables by the method of finite differences and to print the results. In the design of his machine Babbage was influenced by the division of labor employed in the celebrated manuscript tables of de Prony which Babbage had seen in 1819. The division of labor, both physical and mental, became central themes of Babbage's economic thought later developed in his Economy of Machinery and Manufactures . Babbage was convinced of the "great utility" of his machine, but knew that constructing a larger version would entail "very considerable expense," and would also leave him no time to pursue his studies in pure mathematics. On 3 July 1822, as a means of testing the waters, Babbage wrote an open letter to Sir Humphry Davy, president of the Royal Society, in which he presented a detailed description of his Difference Engine. This was his first public statement of his plans for his calculating engine, and his first publication on his project for developing calculating engines, on which he would devote most of his creative energy for the remainder of his life. A copy of this letter published as a pamphlet reached the Lords of the Treasury, who referred it back to the Royal Society on April 1, 1823, with a letter requesting the Society's opinion of Babbage's machine. One month later the Royal Society responded to the Treasury as follows: "That it appears to the Committee, that Mr. Babbage has displayed great talents and ingenuity in the construction of his machine for computation, which the Committee think fully adequate to the attainment of the objects proposed by the Inventor, and that they consider Mr. Babbage as highly deserving of public encouragement in the prosecution of his arduous undertaking" (Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Sessional Papers [1823], p. 6). This favorable report gained Babbage his first national funding of £1000 toward his construction of the Difference Engine. The project tested the limits of precision obtainable by machine tool makers at the time; it also ended up being far more costly than expected, claiming £17,000 of the government's money over the next decade before foundering in 1833, largely due to contractual disputes between Babbage and Joseph Clement, the engineer hired to construct Babbage's machine. By this time Babbage had begun to turn his attention to the Analytical Engine, a far more complex and powerful calculating machine whose design would occupy Babbage for most of the rest of his scientific career. Van Sinderen 1980, no. 18; Origins of Cyberspace 29. Quarto (267 x 217mm). 12 pages. Disbound (margins toned, light wear to top edge of title-page and first page). Cloth chemise; clamshell box.

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