Charles Babbage

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Charles Babbage
Lukisan berasaskan fotograf NPG Ax18347 oleh Henri Claudet, 1860-an.
Kelahiran 26 Disember 1791
England
Kematian 18 Oktober 1871
England
Pekerjaan Ahli Matematik
ahli falsafah analisis
jurutera mekanikal and
(proto-) ahli sains komputer
Pasangan Georgiana Whitmore

Charles Babbage (26 Disember 179118 Oktober 1871) adalah seorang ahli matematik, ahli falsafah analisis, jurutera jentera dan ahli (proto-) sains komputer Inggeris, yang memulakan idea tentang komputer boleh atur cara. Sebilangan bahagian mekanismenya yang belum siap kini dipamerkan di Muzium Sains London. Pada 1991, sebuah enjin beza yang dibina berdasarkan pelan asal Babbage pada toleransi yang mampu tercapai pada abad ke-19 berfungsi dengan sempurna, dan membuktikan bahawa mesin Babbage boleh jalan. Sembilan tahun kemudian, Muzium Sains menyelesaikan pencetak Babbage yang telah direka bentuk untuk enjin bezanya; kerumitannya adalah mengkagumkan bagi sebuah peranti abad ke-19.

Jadual isi kandungan

[Sunting] Kelahiran

Charles Babbage dilahirkan di England, di 44 Crosby Row, Jalan Walworth, London. Sebuah plak biru pada persimpangan Jalan Larcom dan Walworth commemorates the event. Terdapat kekeliruan mengenai tarikh lahir Babbage, yang diterbitkan dalam obituari The Times sebagai 26 Disember 1792. Bagaimanapun, kemudiannya anak saudara Babbage menulis dan menyatakan bahawa Babbage dilahirkan setahun lebih awal, iaitu pada 1791. Daftar parish bagi St. Mary's Newington, London, menunjukkan Babbage di baptised pada 6 Januari 1792 [1].

Bapa Charles, Benjamin Babbage, adalah seorang rakan perbankan kepada Praeds yang memiliki Estet Bitton di Teignmouth. Ibunya Betsy Plumleigh Babbage née Teape. Pada 1808, keluarga Babbage berpindah ke rumah lama Rowdens di Teignmouth Timur, dan Benjamin Babbage menjadi seorang warden di Gereja St. Michael.

[Sunting] Pendidikan

Wang bapa Charles membenarkannya untuk menerima arahan dari berbagai sekolah dan tusyen sewaktu pendidikan sekolah rendahnya. Kira-kira usia lapan tahun dia dihantar ke sekolah desa untuk pemulihan dari demam yang mengancam nyawanya. Keluarganya turut mengarahkan agar "ia tidak dipaksa belajar - brain was not to be taxed too much" dan Babbage percaya bahawa "this great idleness may have led to some of my childish reasonings." Pada waktu yang singkat, dia menghadiri Sekolah King Edward VI Grammar di Totnes, South Devon, tetapi kesihatannya memaksanya balik pada private tutors untuk sementara waktu. Dia kemudian memasuki Akademi Holmwood yang mempunyai 30 para pelajar, di Jalan Baker, Enfield, Middlesex di bawah Reverend Stephen Freeman. Akademinya ada sebuah perpustakaan yang prompted kesukaan Babbage pada matematik. Dia belajar dengan dua lagi private tutors selepas meninggalkan akademi. Dari mulanya, seorang clergyman dekat dengan Cambridge, Babbage berkata, "I fear I did not derive from it all the advantages that I might have done." Yang kedua adalah seorang tutor Oxforddari siapa Babbage mempelajari Classics cukup untuk diterima di Cambridge.

Babbage tiba di Trinity College, Cambridge pada October 1810. Dia membaca extensively di Leibniz, Lagrange, Simpson, dan Lacroix and was seriously disappointed in the mathematical instruction available at Cambridge. In response, he, John Herschel, George Peacock, and several other friends formed the Analytical Society.

Pada 1812 Babbage dipindahkan ke Peterhouse, Cambridge. Dia menjadi ahli matematik yang tertinggi di Peterhouse, tetapi gagal berijazah dengan honours. Dia instead menerima sebuah honorary degree tanpa peperiksaan pada 1814.

[Sunting] Perkahwinan

Pada 25 Julai 1814 [2], Babbage mengahwini Georgiana Whitmore di Gereja St. Michael di Teignmouth, Devon. Bapa Charles tidak menolak perkahwinan tersebut Templat:Fact. Suami isteri ini tinggal di 5 Jalan Devonshire, Tempat Portland, London.

[Sunting] Anak

Charles dan Georgiana bersama ada lapan orang anak [3], tetapi hanya tiga hidup sebagai orang dewasa. Georgiana meinggal dunia di Worcester, pada 1 September 1827 - tambahan lagi, bapa Charles, isteri, dan sekurang-kurangnya dua anak lelaki meninggal dunia pada 1827.

  1. Benjamin Herschel Babbage (lahir 6 Ogos 1815; died Australia, 20 October 1878)
  2. Charles Whitmore Babbage (lahir 22 Januari 1817 died 1827)
  3. Georgiana Whitmore Babbage (lahir 17 Julai 1818 died young)
  4. Edward Stewart Babbage (lahir 15 Disember 1819 died 26 November 1821)
  5. Francis Moore Babbage (lahir 1 Mei 1821 mati muda)
  6. Dugald Bromheald Babbage (lahir 13 Mac 1823 mati di Southampton 23 August 1901)
  7. Henry Prevost Babbage (lahir 16 September 1824 mati di Cheltenham 29 January 1918)
  8. Alexander Forbes Babbage (lahir 1827 mati pada 1827)

[Sunting] Reka bentuk komputer

In recognition of the high error rate in the calculation of mathematical tables, Babbage wanted to find a method by which they could be calculated mechanically, removing human sources of error. Three different factors seem to have influenced him: a dislike of untidiness; his experience working on logarithmic tables; and existing work on calculating machines carried out by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz. He first discussed the principles of a calculating engine in a letter to Sir Humphry Davy in 1822.

Sebahagian dari perbezaan enjin Babbage, diassemblekan selepas kematiannya oleh anak Charles, menggunakan bahagian-bahagian yang ditemui dalam makmalnya.
Besarkan
Sebahagian dari perbezaan enjin Babbage, diassemblekan selepas kematiannya oleh anak Charles, menggunakan bahagian-bahagian yang ditemui dalam makmalnya.

Babbage's engines were among the first mechanical computers. His engines were not actually completed, largely because of funding problems and personality issues. Babbage realized that a machine could do the work better and more reliably than a human being. Babbage controlled building of some steam-powered machines that more or less did their job; calculations could be mechanized to an extent. Although Babbage's machines were mechanical monsters their basic architecture was astonishingly similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I/O unit. Other inventions by Babbage not discussed at length here but worth mentioning are: The cowcatcher, dynamometer car, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, and the heliograph ophthalmoscope.

[Sunting] Enjin perbezaan

In Babbage’s time numerical tables were calculated by humans called ‘computers’. At Cambridge he saw the high error rate of the people computing the tables and thus started his life’s work in trying to calculate the tables mechanically, removing all human error. He began in 1822 with what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions.

Unlike similar efforts of the time, Babbage's difference engine was created to calculate a series of values automatically. By using the method of finite differences, it was possible to avoid the need for multiplication and division.

 Replika Enjin Perbezaan Muzium Sains London, dibinakan dari reka bentuk Babbage.
Besarkan
Replika Enjin Perbezaan Muzium Sains London, dibinakan dari reka bentuk Babbage.

The first difference engine needed around 25,000 parts of a combined weight of fifteen tons standing eight feet high. Although he received much funding for the project, he did not complete it. He later designed an improved version, "Difference Engine No. 2". This was not constructed at the time, but was built using his plans in 1989-1991, to 19th century tolerances, and performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum bringing back results to 31 digits, far more than the average modern pocket calculator.

[Sunting] Pencetak

Babbage merekabentukkan sebuah pencetak untuk enjin perbezaan kedua yang telah ada ciri-ciri hebat; ia menyokong line-wrapping, column dan lebar beraneka, dan format output berprogram.

[Sunting] Enjin beranalisis

Soon after the attempt at making the difference engine crumbled, Babbage started designing a different, more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. The engine is not a single physical machine but a succession of designs that he tinkered with until his death in 1871. The main difference between the two engines is that the Analytical Engine could be programmed using punch cards, an idea unheard of in his time. He realized that programs could be put on similar cards so the person had to only create the program initially, and then put the cards in the machine and let it run. The analytical engine was also proposed to use loops of Jacquard's punched cards to control a mechanical calculator, which could formulate results based on the results of preceding computations. This machine was also intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers, including sequential control, branching, and looping, and would have been the first mechanical device to be Turing-complete.

Ada Lovelace, an impressive mathematician and one of the few people who totally understood Babbage's vision, created a program for the Analytical Engine. Had the Analytical Engine ever actually been built, her program would have been able to calculate a numerical sequence known as the Bernoulli numbers. Based on this work, Ada is now credited as being the first computer programmer and, in 1979, a contemporary programming language was named Ada in her honour. Shortly afterward, in 1981, a satirical article by Tony Karp in Datamation magazine described the Babbage programming language, the "language of the future".

[Sunting] Anugerah-anugerah lain

In 1824, Babbage won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society "for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables".

From 1828 to 1839 Babbage was Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He contributed largely to several scientific periodicals, and was instrumental in founding the Astronomical Society in 1820 and the Statistical Society in 1834. However, he dreamt of designing mechanical calculating machines.

“... I was sitting in the rooms of the Analytical Society, at Cambridge, my head leaning forward on the table in a kind of dreamy mood, with a table of logarithms lying open before me. Another member, coming into the room, and seeing me half asleep, called out, "Well, Babbage, what are you dreaming about?" to which I replied "I am thinking that all these tables" (pointing to the logarithms) "might be calculated by machinery. "

In 1837, responding to the official eight Bridgewater Treatises "On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation", he published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise putting forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator, making laws (or programs) which then produced species at the appropriate times, rather than continually interfering with ad hoc miracles each time a new species was required. The book is a work of natural theology. The book incorporated extracts from correspondence he had been having with John Herschel on the subject.

Charles Babbage also achieved notable results in cryptography. He broke Vigenère's autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is called Vigenère cipher today. The autokey cipher was generally called "the undecipherable cipher", though owing to popular confusion, many thought that the weaker polyalphabetic cipher was the "undecipherable" one. Babbage's discovery was used to aid English military campaigns, and was not published until several years later; as a result credit for the development was instead given to Friedrich Kasiski, a Prussian infantry officer, who made the same discovery some years after Babbage.

Babbage also invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles in 1838. He also constructed a dynamometer car and performed several studies on Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway in about 1838. Charles' eldest son, Benjamin Herschel Babbage, worked as an engineer for Brunel on the railways before emigrating to Australia in the 1850s. Coincidentally, Charles Babbage and Brunel are both buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery.

Babbage only once endeavoured to enter public life, when, in 1832, he stood unsuccessfully for the borough of Finsbury. He came in last in the polls.

[Sunting] Eccentricities

Babbage once counted all the broken panes of glass of a factory, publishing in 1857 a "Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows": 14 of 464 were caused by "drunken men, women or boys". His distaste for commoners ("the Mob") included writing "Observations of Street Nuisances" in 1864, as well as tallying up 165 "nuisances" over a period of 80 days; he especially hated street music. He was also obsessed with fire, once baking himself in an oven at 265°F (130°C) for four minutes "without any great discomfort" and to "see what would happen." Later, he arranged to be lowered into Mount Vesuvius in order to view molten lava for himself.

[Sunting] Quotes

Pada dua occasions saya telah ditanya,--"Wahai, Mr. Babbage, kalau anda meletakkan figure salah ke dalam mesin, apakah jawapan benar akan keluar?" Pada satu case seorang ahli Dewan Negara, dan lagi satu seorang ahli Dewan Rakyat, meletakkan soalan ini. Saya tidak dapat apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a soalan.

Chapter 5, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, Charles Babbage, 1864. ISBN 1-85196-040-6, illustrating that even Babbage had to deal with people who displayed illogical levels of what would now be called "computer illiteracy".

[Sunting] Dinamakan selepas Babbage

  • Babbage crater, di Bulan, telah dinamakan untuk memberi kehormatannya.
  • Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, United States.
  • The former chain retail computer and video-games store "Babbage's" was named after him.
  • Mr Babbage, the computer in game show Family Fortunes
  • Babbage Building, University of Plymouth, Devon, UK.
  • Babbage Lecture Theatre, University of Cambridge, UK.
  • Babbage Computer Suite, Exmouth Community College, UK.
  • Babbage is a giant mechanical monster in the online computer game, City of Heroes.
  • Babbage is a character in the video game Suikoden V who is known for his amazing mechanical inventions.
  • The science fiction novel The Difference Engine refers to Babbage extensively.
  • In the movie "Hackers" the main bad guy attempts to flee being captured, after he has been exposed, by airplane flying under the name of a Mr. Babbage.

[Sunting] Rujukan

  • K. K. Schwarz (2002). "Faraday and Babbage". Notes and Records of the Royal Society 56 (3): 367 –381.
  • General Register Office censuses:
1841 census: HO107/680/5 f.11 p.14
1851 census: unknown
1861 census: RG9/74 f.15 p.27
1871 census: RG10/160 f.58 p.1

[Sunting] Lihat pula

  • History of computing hardware
  • Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, described and programmed the analytical engine
  • Joseph Clement, engineer
  • Earl of Bridgewater for other Bridgewater Treatise

[Sunting] Pautan luar

Koleksi petikan Wikiquote mengenai: Charles Babbage


Didahului oleh:
Sir George Airy
Lucasian Professor at Cambridge University
1828–1839
Diikuti oleh:
Joshua King