Charles Babbage KH FRS ( / ˈ b æ b ɪ dʒ / ; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English expert in many fields. He was a mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who first proposed the idea of a digital computer that could be programmed.

Some people believe Babbage deserves the title "father of the computer." He created the first mechanical computer, called the difference engine, which inspired later electronic designs. His analytical engine, which could be programmed using ideas from the Jacquard loom, included all the basic features of modern computers. Babbage also designed the first computer printers. In addition to his work on computers, he wrote a book in 1832 titled Economy of Manufactures and Machinery. He was an important person in London’s social life and introduced "scientific soirées" from France through his popular Saturday evening events. His work in many areas made him a highly respected polymath of his time.

Babbage died before his designs, such as the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, were fully built. However, parts of his unfinished machines are displayed at the Science Museum in London. In 1991, engineers built a working difference engine using Babbage’s original plans. The machine was made to the same standards as those achievable in the 19th century, proving that his design would have worked if completed.

Early life

Charles Babbage’s birthplace is not certain, but the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests he was likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England. A blue plaque at the corner of Larcom Street and Walworth Road marks this location.

His birth date was reported in The Times as December 26, 1792. However, a nephew later claimed he was born one year earlier, in 1791. The parish register of St. Mary’s, Newington, London, records that Babbage was baptized on January 6, 1792, which supports the 1791 birth year.

Babbage was one of four children born to Benjamin Babbage and Betsy Plumleigh Teape. His father was a banking partner of William Praed when they helped start Praed’s & Co. in Fleet Street, London, in 1801. In 1808, the Babbage family moved to the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth. At about age eight, Babbage was sent to a country school in Alphington, near Exeter, to recover from a serious illness. He briefly attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, South Devon, but his health required him to return to private tutors for a time.

Babbage later joined Holmwood Academy, a school in Baker Street, Enfield, Middlesex, which had 30 students. The academy’s library helped Babbage develop a love for mathematics. After leaving the academy, he studied with two private tutors. The first was a clergyman near Cambridge, through whom Babbage met Charles Simeon and his followers, but the lessons did not meet his needs. He returned home to study at Totnes school at age 16 or 17. The second tutor was from Oxford, and under this tutor, Babbage achieved enough knowledge in Classics to be accepted by the University of Cambridge.

At the University of Cambridge

Charles Babbage arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1810. He had already learned a great deal about mathematics on his own, including works by Robert Woodhouse, Joseph Louis Lagrange, and Maria Gaetana Agnesi. He found the math classes at the university not as good as he had hoped.

In 1812, Babbage, along with John Herschel, George Peacock, and other friends, helped start the Analytical Society. He was also close to Edward Ryan. As a student, Babbage joined other groups, such as The Ghost Club, which studied supernatural events, and the Extractors Club, which aimed to help members avoid being sent to an asylum.

In 1812, Babbage moved to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was the best math student there but did not graduate with honors. Instead, he received a degree without taking exams in 1814. He presented a thesis that some people thought was disrespectful to religious beliefs. It is not clear if this is why he did not take the final exam.

After Cambridge

Because of his fame, Babbage made progress quickly. He gave lectures on astronomy at the Royal Institution in 1815 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816. After finishing school, he applied for jobs but was not successful, and had few career opportunities. In 1816, he tried to get a teaching job at Haileybury College. He had support from James Ivory and John Playfair but lost the position to Henry Walter. In 1819, Babbage and Herschel traveled to Paris and met with French mathematicians and physicists at the Society of Arcueil. That year, Babbage applied to be a professor at the University of Edinburgh, with support from Pierre Simon Laplace, but the position went to William Wallace.

With Herschel, Babbage studied the electrodynamics of Arago's rotations and published their findings in 1825. Their explanations were temporary and later expanded by Michael Faraday. These discoveries are now part of the theory of eddy currents. Babbage and Herschel missed some clues that could have helped unify electromagnetic theory, focusing instead on Ampère's force law.

Babbage bought the actuarial tables of George Barrett, who died in 1821, leaving unpublished work. In 1826, Babbage wrote a report titled Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives, analyzing the field. This interest followed a plan to start an insurance company, suggested by Francis Baily in 1824, though the plan was never carried out. Babbage calculated actuarial tables for the scheme using mortality data from the Equitable Society dating back to 1762.

Throughout this time, Babbage relied on his father's financial support, due to his father's disapproval of his early marriage in 1814, when he married the Whitmore sisters. He lived in Marylebone, London, and started a large family. After his father died in 1827, Babbage inherited a large estate worth about £100,000 (equivalent to £9.14 million or $12.5 million today), making him independently wealthy. After his wife died the same year, he traveled. In Italy, he met Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, which led to a later visit to Piedmont. In April 1828, while in Rome, he learned he had been appointed a professor at Cambridge, a position he had previously failed to obtain in 1820, 1823, and 1826.

Babbage helped found the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820, originally called the Astronomical Society of London. Its goals were to standardize astronomical calculations and share data. These efforts connected with Babbage's ideas about computation. In 1824, he won the society's Gold Medal for inventing a machine to calculate mathematical and astronomical tables.

Babbage's idea to use machines to avoid errors in tables became common after Dionysius Lardner wrote about it in 1834 in the Edinburgh Review (under Babbage's guidance). The context of these developments is still debated. Babbage described the origin of the difference engine as beginning with the Astronomical Society's goal to improve The Nautical Almanac. He and Herschel were asked to oversee a trial project to recalculate parts of the tables. Discrepancies were found, leading Babbage to develop his idea for mechanical computation. This event occurred in 1821 or 1822. The issue with The Nautical Almanac is now linked to a divide in British science after the death of Sir Joseph Banks in 1820.

Babbage studied the need for a modern postal system with his friend Thomas Frederick Colby, concluding that a uniform rate should be used. This was later implemented with the Uniform Fourpenny Post, replaced by the Uniform Penny Post in 1839 and 1840. Colby was also part of the founding group of the Royal Astronomical Society and led the Survey of Ireland. Herschel and Babbage were present during a notable operation of that survey, the remeasuring of the Lough Foyle baseline.

The Analytical Society began as a student-led project but later achieved more significant results. In 1816, Babbage, Herschel, and Peacock translated Sylvestre Lacroix's lectures from French, which was the leading calculus textbook at the time.

Mention of Lagrange in calculus relates to the use of formal power series, now known by that name. British mathematicians used these from about 1730 to 1760. When reintroduced, they were not only used as notations in calculus but also opened new areas like functional equations and operator methods for solving differential equations. The difference between difference and differential equations was symbolically represented by changing Δ to D, as a "finite" difference becomes "infinitesimal." These methods became popular but eventually led to diminishing returns. The concept of limits, introduced by Cauchy, was avoided. Woodhouse had already started a "British Lagrangian School" by treating Taylor series as formal.

In this context, expressing function composition is complex because the chain rule is not simply applied to second and higher derivatives. Woodhouse knew this by 1803, taking an idea from Louis François Antoine Arbogast, now called Faà di Bruno's formula. This method was known earlier by Abraham De Moivre (1697). Herschel found it impressive, and Babbage was aware of it. Ada Lovelace later noted its compatibility with the analytical engine. Before 1820, Babbage worked intensively on functional equations and resisted both traditional finite differences and Arbogast's approach (where Δ and D were related by the exponential map). Through Herschel, Babbage was influenced by Arbogast's ideas on iteration, or composing a function with itself multiple times. In a major paper on functional equations published in the Philosophical Transactions (1815/6), Babbage stated his starting point was the work of Gaspard Monge.

Academic

From 1828 to 1839, Charles Babbage held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. Unlike other professors, he did not live on campus and often neglected his teaching duties. During this time, he wrote three books about important topics. In 1832, he was chosen as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Babbage had poor relationships with some colleagues, such as George Biddell Airy, who had previously held the same position at Trinity College, Cambridge. Airy criticized Babbage for not giving lectures. Babbage planned to teach a class on political economy in 1831 but never gave a lecture. He believed universities should focus more on research, offer a wider range of subjects, and include more practical applications in education. However, William Whewell disagreed with his ideas. Babbage also had a long disagreement with Richard Jones that lasted six years.

During this time, Babbage tried to become involved in politics. He supported ideas such as ending the special status of the Church of England, expanding voting rights, and giving more influence to factory owners. He ran for a seat in Parliament twice for the borough of Finsbury. In 1832, he finished third in a race with five candidates, losing by about 500 votes because two other reformers split the vote. In his memoirs, Babbage wrote that this election brought him close to Samuel Rogers, whose brother had wanted to support Babbage but died shortly after. In 1834, Babbage came last in another election. In 1832, Babbage, along with Herschel and Ivory, was named a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order, but they were not later given the title "Sir," which usually came with such honors.

Babbage became known for writing strongly about issues. His book Reflections on the Decline of Science and Some of Its Causes (1830) criticized British science and aimed to replace Davies Gilbert as president of the Royal Society, which Babbage wanted to reform. He wrote the book after being upset about not being chosen for a leadership role at the Royal Society. Michael Faraday responded to Babbage’s work with a letter titled On the Alleged Decline of Science in England (1831). Babbage’s ideas did not influence the Royal Society, as the Duke of Sussex was chosen to replace Gilbert. However, Babbage’s work helped lead to the creation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in 1831.

In 1831, the Mechanics’ Magazine called Babbage’s followers "Declinarians." The magazine noted that David Brewster, who wrote for the Quarterly Review, was also a leader of this group. It also pointed out that both Babbage and Brewster had received public funding.

During debates about statistics and data collection, the BAAS supported gathering data. In 1833, the Statistical Section of the BAAS was formed, with Babbage as chairman and John Elliot Drinkwater as secretary. This group led to the creation of the Statistical Society, with Babbage as its public face, supported by Richard Jones and Robert Malthus.

Babbage published On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832), which discussed how to organize industrial production. This book was an early example of operational research. John Rennie the Younger mentioned Babbage’s work in a speech to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1846, noting it had first appeared as an article in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. Babbage expanded on earlier ideas from his 1827 work, An Essay on the General Principles Which Regulate the Application of Machinery to Manufactures and the Mechanical Arts, which became an article in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana in 1829. His book divided into two parts: the first discussed machines and factories, and the second covered the "domestic and political economy" of manufacturing.

The book was popular and reached a fourth edition by 1836. Babbage claimed his work was based on observations in factories in Britain and abroad. The first edition did not address political economy, but the second edition added three chapters, including one on piece-rate pay. The book also included ideas about designing factories efficiently and sharing profits with workers.

In On the Economy of Machinery, Babbage described what is now called the "Babbage principle," which highlights the benefits of dividing labor carefully to reduce costs. He noted this idea had been previously mentioned by Melchiorre Gioia in 1815. The term "Babbage principle" was later introduced in 1974 by Harry Braverman. Similar ideas include the "principle of multiples" by Philip Sargant Florence and the "balance of processes."

Babbage explained that skilled workers often perform tasks below their skill level. If tasks are divided among workers, costs can be reduced by assigning high-skill tasks to expensive workers and simpler tasks to less expensive workers. He also argued that standardizing tasks allows for greater efficiency, supporting the factory system. His view of human capital focused on minimizing the time needed to recover training costs.

Another part of the book analyzed the costs of book publishing. Babbage criticized the publishing industry for its profitability and named groups that restricted competition. Twenty years later, he attended a meeting to oppose the Booksellers Association, which still acted as a cartel.

It has been said that "what Arthur Young was to agriculture, Charles Babbage was to the factory visit and machinery." Babbage’s ideas influenced the layout of the 1851 Great Exhibition and affected George Julius Poulett Scrope. Karl Marx argued that the factory system’s productivity came from combining the division of labor with machinery, building on ideas from Adam Smith, Babbage, and Andrew Ure. Marx agreed with Babbage that the division of labor was driven by profitability, not just productivity, and noted its impact on trade.

John Ruskin strongly opposed Babbage’s views on manufacturing. Babbage also influenced John Stuart Mill’s economic thinking. George Holyoake saw Babbage’s discussion of profit sharing as similar to ideas from Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, though it required a leader to manage.

From 1828 into the 1840s, Babbage hosted Saturday night gatherings for scientists, writers, and aristocrats. He is credited with bringing the "scientific soirée" to England from France.

Works by Babbage and Andrew Ure were translated into French in 1830, including On the Economy of Machinery.

Later life

The British Association was created to be similar to the Deutsche Naturforscher-Versammlung, which was started in 1822. It did not support romantic science or metaphysics, and it helped separate science from literature and professionals from amateurs. Charles Babbage was part of the "Wattite" group in the British Association, which included James Watt the younger. Babbage worked closely with industrialists and wanted to move quickly in the same direction as them. He had little interest in the more traditional members of the association. He believed that industrial society was the final stage of human development, a view he shared with Herschel. A disagreement with Roderick Murchison in 1838 caused Babbage to stop participating further. That same year, he resigned from his position as Lucasian professor, leaving behind the conflict with Whewell in Cambridge. His focus shifted to computation, meteorology, and international connections.

Babbage planned to create a project that would list all physical constants, called "constants of nature," a term he introduced. He was a pioneer in "absolute measurement," building on the work of Johann Christian Poggendorff. He shared his ideas with Brewster in 1832. His project included 19 categories of constants, which some historians say reflect Babbage’s unusual interests. His paper, On Tables of the Constants of Nature and Art, was reprinted in 1856 by the Smithsonian Institution, with a note that Arnold Henry Guyot’s physical tables would be part of the project.

Precise measurement was important for developing machine tools. Babbage was a pioneer in this area, along with Henry Maudslay, William Sellers, and Joseph Whitworth.

Through the Royal Society, Babbage became friends with engineer Marc Brunel. Brunel introduced Babbage to Joseph Clement, who worked with artisans Babbage studied for his research on manufacturing. Babbage helped Isambard Kingdom Brunel connect with the Bristol & Birmingham Railway in 1830. Around 1838, Babbage studied and showed that the broad gauge used by Brunel’s Great Western Railway was better for trains.

In 1838, Babbage invented the pilot, also called a cow-catcher, which is the metal frame on the front of locomotives that clears obstacles from tracks. He also built a dynamometer car. His eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on railways before moving to Australia in the 1850s.

Babbage also invented an ophthalmoscope, which he gave to Thomas Wharton Jones for testing. Jones did not use it, and the device was not used until Hermann von Helmholtz independently invented it later.

Babbage made important contributions to cryptography, though this was not widely known for a century after his death. Letter frequency was category 18 in his project to list constants. Joseph Henry later supported interest in this area, linking it to the management of movable type.

As early as 1845, Babbage solved a cipher challenge set by his nephew, Henry Hollier. In doing so, he discovered that using a keyword to encrypt text made the cipher subject to modular arithmetic. During the Crimean War in the 1850s, Babbage cracked Vigenère’s autokey cipher and the simpler Vigenère cipher used today. He planned to write a book called The Philosophy of Deciphering but never published it. His findings were kept secret by the military, and credit for the discovery was given to Friedrich Kasiski, a Prussian officer who made the same discovery later. However, Babbage published a solution to a Vigenère cipher in 1854, which had appeared earlier in the Journal of the Society of Arts. In 1855, he also published a short article titled "Cypher Writing" in the same journal. His role in solving the cipher was only officially recognized in 1985.

Babbage took part in public campaigns against problems that bothered people. In 1857, he published a table showing the causes of broken glass windows. Out of 464 broken panes, 14 were caused by "drunken men, women, or boys."

Babbage disliked common people, or the "Mob," and wrote Observations of Street Nuisances in 1864. He counted 165 "nuisances" over 80 days, especially hating street music, particularly the music of organ grinders. He criticized them in public speeches. One example of his views is quoted in historical records.

Babbage was not alone in his efforts. Michael Thomas Bass, a member of Parliament, supported his cause.

In the 1860s, Babbage also opposed hoop-rolling, a game where boys rolled iron hoops. He blamed this activity for causing accidents when hoops rolled under horses’ legs, leading to injuries. He became well-known for his campaign, and in 1864, he was criticized in Parliament for starting a "crusade" against the games of tip-cat and hoop-rolling.

Computing pioneer

Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers. They were not completed mainly because of funding issues and disagreements with others, especially George Biddell Airy, who was the Astronomer Royal.

Babbage oversaw the creation of some steam-powered machines that had limited success, showing that calculations could be done by machines. For over ten years, the government gave him money for his project, totaling £17,000. However, the government later lost trust in him.

Although Babbage's machines were large and difficult to use, their basic design was similar to modern computers. They separated data and program memory, used instructions to operate, had a control unit that could make decisions, and included a separate input/output unit.

During Babbage's time, mathematical tables were created by people who did calculations by hand. These tables were important for navigation, science, engineering, and mathematics. Mistakes often happened during copying or calculation.

At Cambridge, Babbage noticed the problems with this process and saw the chance to use machines to improve it. He wrote about a time when he became interested in calculating mathematical tables. He was familiar with a French project led by Gaspard de Prony, which had its own challenges. After the Napoleonic Wars ended, scientists began working together again. In the 1820s and 1830s, Babbage wrote about de Prony's project in detail.

In 1822, Babbage started work on a machine he called the difference engine. It was designed to calculate values of polynomial functions automatically. Using the method of finite differences, it avoided the need for multiplication and division.

To build a prototype difference engine, Babbage hired Joseph Clement in 1823. Clement worked carefully, but his tools were very complex. At the time, he could charge for building them and keep ownership. He and Babbage had a disagreement about costs in 1831.

Parts of the prototype are now in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. This prototype became the "first difference engine." It was never completed, and the parts that were made are at the Science Museum in London. The first difference engine would have had about 25,000 parts, weighed 13,600 kg, and stood 2.4 meters tall. Even though Babbage received funding, the project was not finished. Later, from 1847 to 1849, he created detailed plans for an improved version called "Difference Engine No. 2," but he did not get government funding. His design was built in 1989–1991 using 19th-century manufacturing methods. It performed its first calculation in London, returning results accurate to 31 digits.

Nine years later, in 2000, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine. His printers were the first computer printers ever invented.

The Science Museum built two Difference Engines based on Babbage's plans for the Difference Engine No. 2. One is owned by the museum. The other, owned by Nathan Myhrvold, was displayed at the Computer History Museum in California in 2008. These models are not copies.

After the first difference engine project failed, Babbage worked on designing a more advanced machine called the Analytical Engine. He hired C. G. Jarvis, who had previously worked with Clement. The Analytical Engine marked a shift from simple arithmetic to general-purpose computation. It is the main reason Babbage is considered a pioneer in computing.

A major innovation of the Analytical Engine was its use of punched cards for programming. It was intended to use loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could use results from earlier calculations. It also included features used in modern computers, such as sequential control, branching, and looping. It would have been the first mechanical device capable of being Turing-complete. Babbage wrote programs for the Analytical Engine from 1837 to 1840. The first program was completed in 1837. The Analytical Engine was not a single machine but a series of designs Babbage worked on until his death in 1871.

Ada Lovelace, who communicated with Babbage during the development of the Analytical Engine, is credited with creating an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Some scholars question how much of the idea was her own, but evidence in her handwriting supports her contribution. She is often called the first computer programmer, even though no programming language existed at the time.

Lovelace also translated and wrote about the project. She compared the engine's programming to a Jacquard loom, writing: "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

In 1840, Babbage visited Turin at the invitation of Giovanni Plana, who had created an analog computing machine. In Turin, Babbage gave the only public explanation of the Analytical Engine. In 1842, Charles Wheatstone asked Lovelace to translate a paper by Luigi Menabrea, who had taken notes from Babbage's talks. Babbage also asked her to add her own ideas. Fortunato Prandi, an interpreter in Turin, was an Italian exile who supported Giuseppe Mazzini.

Per Georg Scheutz wrote about the difference engine in 1830 and experimented with automated computation. After 1834, he doubted whether Babbage's plan could be completed and worked on his own project with his son, Edvard Scheutz. Another Swedish engine was built by Martin Wiberg in 1860.

In 2011, researchers in Britain proposed a project called "Plan 28" to build Babbage's Analytical Engine. Since Babbage's plans were constantly changing and never finished, they wanted the public to help decide what to build. The engine would have 675 bytes of memory and run at 7 Hz. They aimed to complete it by 2021, the 150th anniversary of Babbage's death.

Recent advances in MEMS and nanotechnology have led to new experiments in mechanical computation. These machines may work well in high radiation or high temperature environments. Modern versions of mechanical computation were discussed in The Economist in a special issue titled "Babbage's Last Laugh."

Because of his connection to the town, Babbage was chosen to appear on the 5 Totnes pound note in 2007. His image also appears in the British cultural icons section of the new

Family

On July 25, 1814, Charles Babbage married Georgiana Whitmore, the sister of William Wolryche-Whitmore, a member of the British Parliament. The ceremony took place at St. Michael's Church in Teignmouth, Devon. Babbage and Georgiana lived at Dudmaston Hall in Shropshire, where Babbage designed the central heating system. In 1815, they moved to 5 Devonshire Street in London.

Charles and Georgiana had eight children, but only four—Benjamin Herschel, Georgiana Whitmore, Dugald Bromhead, and Henry Prevost—lived past childhood. Georgiana died in Worcester on September 1, 1827, the same year that Charles’s father, their second son (also named Charles), and their newborn son Alexander passed away.

• Benjamin Herschel Babbage (1815–1878)
• Charles Whitmore Babbage (1817–1827)
• Georgiana Whitmore Babbage (1818–September 26, 1834)
• Edward Stewart Babbage (1819–1821)
• Francis Moore Babbage (1821–????)
• Dugald Bromhead (Bromheald?) Babbage (1823–1901)
• (Maj-Gen) Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918)
• Alexander Forbes Babbage (1827–1827)

Henry Prevost Babbage, the youngest child who survived, created six small models of Difference Engine No. 1 based on his father’s designs. One of these models was sent to Harvard University, where it was later found by Howard H. Aiken, an early developer of the Harvard Mark I. A 1910 model of the Analytical Engine Mill, previously displayed at Dudmaston Hall, is now shown at the Science Museum.

Death

Charles Babbage lived and worked for more than 40 years at 1 Dorset Street, Marylebone. He passed away on October 18, 1871, at the age of 79, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London. According to Horsley, Babbage died from kidney failure caused by a bladder infection. He refused both a knighthood and a baronetcy. He also opposed inherited titles, preferring titles that were given for life instead.

In 1983, the autopsy report for Charles Babbage was found and later published by his great-great-grandson. A copy of the original report is also available. One half of Babbage’s brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in London. The other half is displayed at the Science Museum in London.

Memorials

A black plaque honors the 40 years Charles Babbage spent at 1 Dorset Street, London. Locations, institutions, and other things named after Babbage include:

• Babbage Crater on the Moon
• The Charles Babbage Institute, which is an information technology archive and research center at the University of Minnesota
• Babbage River Falls in Yukon, Canada
• The Charles Babbage Premium, an annual computing award
• British Rail named a locomotive after Charles Babbage in the 1990s
• Babbage Island in Western Australia
• The Babbage Building at the University of Plymouth, where the university's school of computing is located
• The Babbage programming language used for GEC 4000 series minicomputers
• "Babbage," The Economist's Science and Technology blog
• A former store chain called "Babbage's" (now known as GameStop) was named after him.

In fiction and film

Charles Babbage is often featured in steampunk stories; he is considered a well-known figure in this genre. Other works that include Babbage are:

• A 2008 short film titled Babbage, shown at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, entered as a 2009 finalist with Haydenfilms, and later appeared at the 2009 HollyShorts Film Festival and other international film festivals. The film portrays Babbage at a dinner party, where guests discuss his life and work.
• Sydney Padua created The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, a cartoon that imagines a different version of history in which Babbage and Lovelace successfully build the Analytical Engine. The work uses many quotes from writings by Lovelace, Babbage, and their contemporaries.
• Kate Beaton, the creator of the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, made a comic strip about Charles and Georgiana Babbage.
• The Doctor Who episode "Spyfall, Part 2" (Season 12, episode 2) includes Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace as characters who help the Doctor when she is trapped in the year 1834.

Publications

• A report on repeating experiments by M. Arago about the magnetism shown by different materials during rotation. Published in London: William Nicol. 1825.
• Charles Babbage (1826). A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives. Published in London: J. Mawman. Charles Babbage.
• Charles Babbage (1830). Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. Published in London: B. Fellowes. Charles Babbage.
• Abstract of a paper titled Observations on the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli. Published in London: Richard Taylor. 1834.
• Charles Babbage (1835). On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (4th edition). Published in London: Charles Knight.
• Charles Babbage (1837). The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a Fragment. Published in London: John Murray. Charles Babbage. (Reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2009, ISBN 978-1-108-00000-0.)
• Charles Babbage (1841). Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000. Published in London: William Clowes and Sons. Charles Babbage. (The LOCOMAT site contains a reconstruction of this table.)
• Charles Babbage (1851). The Exposition of 1851. Published in London: John Murray. Charles Babbage.
• Laws of Mechanical Notation. 1851.
• Charles Babbage (1864). Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. Published in London: Longman.
• Charles Babbage (1989). Hyman, Anthony (editor). Science and Reform: Selected Works of Charles Babbage. Published by Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-34311-4.
• Charles Babbage (1989) [1815]. "Charles Babbage's Lectures on Astronomy." Published in London.