Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer

This book discusses the career of Charles Babbage (1791-1871), British
advocate of the systematic use of science in industry and creator of
machines that were precursors of the modern computer. Babbage used his
immense personal charm and vitality in an attempt to change the thinking
of contemporary industrialists who had little use for the higher
reaches of science. Shifting his own energies from pure mathematics, he
planned engines that would "calculate by steam": the Difference Engines,
designed to compute tables according to the method of finite
differences, and the more complex Analytical Engines, forerunners of the
modern computer. Almost forgotten and then rediscovered in the middle
of the twentieth century, the Analytical Engines are among the great
intellectual achievements of humankind. This biography of their
polymathic inventor gives a convincing account of his tragic personal
life and his important place in the history of science.