Happy Babbagemas Everyone!

Turns out that the day after Newtonmas is Babbagemas, the annual celebration of Charles Babbage’s birthday on 26th December 1791. As well as having something to do with computers he also had a good understanding of your common or garden politician and their scientific understanding:

On two occasions I have been asked, รขโ‚ฌโ€œ “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

It is traditional (starting from now) to celebrate Babbagemas by blogging on the day.

3 thoughts on “Happy Babbagemas Everyone!

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention New blog post: Happy Babbagemas Everyone! -- Topsy.com

  2. I used a Difference Engine #1 in December to calculate cubes. One of 3 in the world, it lives in a private home in Melbourne, and is a very beautiful structure made from Meccano. If Babbage had had access to Meccano instead of having to design all his bits and have them hand-made, the history of computing may have been quite different. A picture of the Melbourne model can be found on the Meccano club’s website.

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