Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

1. All the drawings explaining the principles of the Mechanical Notation. 2. The complete Mechanical Notations of the Swedish Calculating Engine of M. Scheutz. These latter drawings had been made and used by my youngest son, Major Henry P. Babbage, now resident in India, in explaining the principles of the Mechanical Notation at the meeting of the British Association at Glasgow, and afterwards in London, at a meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers.29 3. The Mechanical Notations of the Difference Engine No. 1. {156} These had been made at my own expense, and were finished by myself and my eldest son, Mr. B. Herschel Babbage, now resident in South Australia. 4. A complete set of the drawings of the Difference Engine No. 2, for calculating and printing tables, with seven orders of differences, and thirty places of figures. Finished in 1849. 5. A complete set of the Notations necessary for the explanation and demonstration of Difference Engine No. 2, finished in 1849. 29 See Proceedings of British Association at Glasgow, 1855, p. 203; also Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. xv., 1856. These drawings and notations would have required for their exhibition about seven or eight hundred square feet of wall. My letter to Mr. Gravatt was forwarded to the Com­mis­sion­ers with his own application for space to exhibit them. The Com­mis­sion­ers declined this offer; yet during the first six weeks of the Exhibition there was at a short distance from the Difference Engine an empty space of wall large enough for the greater part of these instructive diagrams. This portion of wall was afterwards filled up by a vast oil-cloth. Other large portions of wall, to the amount of thousands of square feet, were given up to other oil-cloths, and to numberless carpets. It is evident the Royal Com­mis­sion­ers were much better qualified to judge of furniture for the feet than of furniture for the head. I was myself frequently asked why I did not employ a person to explain the Difference Engine. In reply to some of my friends, I inquired whether, when they purchased a carriage, they expected the builder to pay the wages of their coachman. 〈FOREIGN VISITORS PUZZLED.〉 But my greatest difficulty was with foreigners; no explanation I could devise, and I tried many, appeared at all {157} to satisfy their minds. The thing seemed to them entirely in­com­pre­hen­sible. That the nation possessing the greatest military and commercial marine in the world—the nation which had spent so much in endeavouring to render perfect the means of finding the longitude—which had recently caused to be computed and published at considerable expense an entirely new set of lunar Tables should not have availed itself at any cost of mechanical means of computing and stereotyping such Tables, seemed entirely beyond their comprehension. At last they asked me whether the Com­mis­sion­ers were bêtes. I assured them that the only one with whom I was personally acquainted certainly was not. When hard pressed by difficult questions, I thought it my duty as an Englishman to save my country’s character, even at the expense of my own. So on one occasion I suggested to my unsatisfied friends that Com­mis­sion­ers were usually selected from the highest class of society, and that possibly four out of five had never heard of my name. But here again my generous efforts to save the character of my country and its Com­mis­sion­ers entirely failed. Several of my foreign friends had known me in their own homes, and had seen the estimation in which I was held by their own countrymen and by their own sovereign. These were still more astonished. 〈CHINESE INQUIRE ABOUT IT.〉 On another occasion an anecdote was quoted against me to prove that my name was well known even in China. It may, perhaps, amuse the reader. A short time after the arrival of Count Strzelecki in England, I had the pleasure of meeting him at the table of a common friend. Many inquiries were made relative to his residence in China. Much interest was expressed by several of the party to learn on {158} what subject the Chinese were most anxious to have information. Count Strzelecki told them that the subject of most frequent inquiry was Babbage’s Calculating Machine. On being further asked as to the nature of the inquiries, he said they were most anxious to know whether it would go into the pocket. Our host now introduced me to Count Strzelecki, opposite to whom I was then sitting. After expressing my pleasure at the introduction, I told the Count that he might safely assure his friends in the Celestial Empire that it was in every sense of the word an out-of-pocket machine. At last the Com­mis­sion­ers were moved, not to supply the deficiency themselves, but to address the Government, to whom the Difference Engine belonged, to send somebody to explain it. I received a communication from the Board of Works, inquiring whether I could make any suggestions for getting over this difficulty. I immediately made inquiries, and found a person who formerly had been my amanuensis, and had, under my direction, worked out many most intricate problems. He possessed very considerable knowledge of mathematics, and was willing, for the moderate remuneration of six shillings a day, to be present daily during nine hours to explain the Difference Engine. I immediately sent this information to the Board of Works, with the name and address of the person I recommended. This, I have little doubt, was directly communicated to the Com­mis­sion­ers; but they did not avail themselves of his services. 〈COMMISSIONERS INEXPLICABLE.〉 It is difficult, upon any principle, to explain the conduct of the Royal Com­mis­sion­ers of the Exhibition of 1862. They were appointed by the Government, yet when the Government itself became an exhibitor, and sent for exhibition a {159} Difference Engine, the property of the nation, these Com­mis­sion­ers placed it in a small hole in a dark corner, where it could, with some difficulty, be seen by six people at the same time. No remonstrance was of the slightest avail; it was “Hobson’s choice,” that or none. It was represented that all other space was occupied. A trophy of children’s toys, whose merits, it is true, the Com­mis­sion­ers were somewhat more competent to appreciate, filled one of the most prominent positions in the building. On the other hand, a trophy of the workmanship of English engineers, executed by machine tools thirty years before, and admitted by the best judges to be unsurpassed by any rival, was placed in a position not very inappropriate for the authorities themselves who condemned it to that locality. But no hired aristocratic30 agent was employed to excite the slumbering perceptions of the Com­mis­sion­ers, who might have secured a favourable position for the Difference Engine, by practising on their good nature, or by imposing upon their imbecility. 30 See “The Times,” 19 Jan., 1863, and elsewhere. It has been urged, in extenuation of the con­duct of these Com­mis­sion­ers, that their duty as guardians of the funds intrusted to them, and of the interests of the Guarantors, compelled them to practise a rigid economy. Rigid economy is to be respected only when it is under the control of judgment, not of favouritism. If the machinery for making arithmetical calculations which was placed at the disposal of the Com­mis­sion­ers had been properly arranged, it might have been made at once a source of high gratification to the public and even of profit to the Exhibition. {160} 〈A COURT FOR CALCULATING MACHINES.〉 Such a group of Calculating Machines might have been placed by themselves in a small court capable of holding a limited number of persons. Round the walls of this court might have been hung the drawings I had offered to lend, containing the whole of those necessary for the Difference Engine No. 2, as well as a large number of illustrations for the explanation of the Mechanical Notation. The Swedish Difference Engine and my own might have been slowly making calculations during the whole day. This court should have been open to the public generally, except at two or three periods of half an hour each, during which it should have been accessible only to those who had previously secured tickets at a shilling apiece. During each half hour the person whom I had recommended to the Com­mis­sion­ers might have given a short popular explanation of the subject. This attraction might have been still further increased, and additional profit made, if a single sheet of paper had been printed containing a woodcut of the Swedish Machine, an impression from a page of the Tables computed and stereotyped by it at Somerset House, and also an impression from a stereotype plate of the Difference Engine exhibited by the Government. A plate of the Swedish Machine is in existence in London. I am confident that, for such a purpose, I could have procured the loan of it for the Com­mis­sion­ers, and I would willingly have supplied them with the stereotype plate from which the frontispage of the present volume was printed, together with from ten to twenty lines of necessary explanation. These illustrations of machinery used for computing and printing Tables might have been put up into packets of dozens and half dozens, and also have been sold in single {161} sheets at the rate of one penny each copy. There can be no doubt the sale of them would have been very considerable. As it was, I found the woodcut representing the Difference Engine No. 1 in great request, and during the exhibition I had numberless applications for it; having given away my whole stock of about 800 copies. 〈AN ASSISTANT EXPLAINING.〉 The calculating court might have held comfortably from sixty to eighty seats. Each lecture would have produced say 3 l. This being repeated three times each day, together with the sale of the woodcuts, would have produced about 10 l. per day, out of which the Com­mis­sion­ers would have had six shillings per day to pay the assistant who gave the required explanations. If the dignity of the Com­mis­sion­ers would not permit them to make money by such means, they might have announced that the proceeds of the tickets would be given to the distressed population of the Manchester district, and there would then have been crowds of visitors. But the rigid economy of the Com­mis­sion­ers, who refused to expend six shillings a day for an attendant, although it would most probably have produced a return of several hundred pounds, was entirely laid aside when their patronage was to be extended to a brother official. Captain Fowke, an officer of engineers, whose high order of architectural talent became afterwards so well known to the public, and whose whole time and services were retained and paid for by the country, was employed to make a design for the Exhibition Building. 〈THE COMMISSIONERS DO A JOB.〉 The Com­mis­sion­ers approved of this design, which comprised two lofty domes, uniting in themselves the threefold inconvenience of being ugly, useless, and expensive. They then proceeded to pay him five thousand pounds for the job. {162} This system of awarding large sums of money to certain favoured public officers who are already paid for their services by liberal salaries seems to be a growing evil. At the period of the Irish famine the under-secretary of the Treasury condescended to accept 2,500 l. out of the fund raised to save a famished nation. Some inquiries, even recently, were oc­ca­sion­al­ly made whether any similar deduction will be allowed from the liberal cont­ri­bu­tions to the sufferers by the cotton famine. The question was raised and the practice reprobated in the House of Commons by men of opposite party