conomist. Babbage pioneered lighthouse signaling, proposed “black box” recorders for monitoring the conditions preceding railway catastrophes, and advocated decimal currency and the use of tidal power once coal reserves were exhausted. He favored and campaigned for the introduction of Continental theories to the mathematics curriculum and highlighted the neglect of science and the status of scientists. Babbage worked on his Analytical Engine until his death in 1871. Sadly, it was never completed and few ended up knowing who he was. It was often said that Babbage was a hundred years ahead of his time and that the technology of his day was inadequate for the task. It is interesting to contemplate the effect on history if Babbage had realized that a stored program computer could be made using relays. The parts of the Difference Engine that had seemed possible of completion in 1830 gathered dust in the Museum of King's College. His vision of a massive brass, steam-powered, general-purpose, mechanical computer inspired some of the great minds of the nineteenth century but failed to persuade any backer to provide the funds to actually construct it. If Babbage would have been taken more seriously, a computer could have been built in the 1800's, and would have advanced the use of the modern computers by almost a century. By the 1880's, Babbage was known primarily for his reform of mathematics at Cambridge. In 1899, the magazine Temple Bar reported that "the present generation appears to have forgotten Babbage and his calculating machine". It was only after the first electromechanical and later, electronic computers had been built in the twentieth century, that designers of those machines discovered the extent to which Babbage had anticipated almost every aspect of their work. Babbage faced significant problems with mechanical techniques. He had to invent the tools for his engine. His thought is so thoroughly modern tha...
