Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

Talk by Doron D. Swade, Guest Curator at the Computer History Museum in California

Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2
Wednesday, October 24 2007
7:30 pm in Science Center 101 (Swarthmore College)

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is widely recognised as the great ancestral figure in the history of computing. The designs for his vast mechanical calculating engines rank among the startling achievements of the nineteenth century. Yet Babbage failed to build a complete engine. The sorry saga of his heroic efforts is a tale told and retold as a parable with lessons for modern times. Babbage died bitter and unacknowledged by his peers with his vision largely unrealised. A question mark has hung over his head ever since was he an impractical dreamer, or an engineer and designer of the highest calibre?

This lecture will recount efforts in the nineteenth century by Babbage and others to construct automatic computing engines. It will also recount the successful construction and operation of a calculating engine built to original designs the first complete Babbage engine, Difference Engine No. 2. In a project led by the speaker, this 5-tonne engine, designed between 1847 and 1849, was built over a period of 18 years and completed in 2002.

Controversially the lecture will also outline the results of new research that invite a revision of our received perceptions of Babbage. These include dumbing down for purposes of public consumption the original ambitions for the engines and the way this has misled historians ever since.

Doron Swade (PhD, MSc, C.Eng, CITP, FBCS) is an engineer, historian, museum professional and a leading authority on the life and work of the 19th-century computer pioneer Charles Babbage. He has studied physics, electronics engineering, philosophy of science, machine intelligence, and history, at various universities including Cambridge University and University College London. He has a PhD in history of computing, an MSc in Control Engineering and a BSc in physics and electronics. He is currently Guest Curator at the Computer History Museum in California, and Visiting Professor (History of Computing) at the University of Portsmouth. He was Senior Curator of Computing at the Science Museum, London and later Assistant Director & Head of Collections. During this time he masterminded the construction of the first Babbage Calculating Engine built to original 19th-century designs. He has authored three books and over seventy scholarly and popular articles on curatorship, museology, and history of computing. His most recent book is The Cogwheel Brain: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer (Little, Brown, 2000) (Published in the US as The Difference Engine (Viking-Penguin 2001 & 2).

This talk is presented by the Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science and the Delaware Valley Distinguished Lecture Series in Computer Science. It is jointly hosted by: Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and Villanova University.