Abstract

Oxford University Press proudly announces: “Now, for the first time, Oxford offers the general public a series of readable accessible biographies of great scientists.” Included among the chosen great men is Charles Babbage, described on the back cover of this book as “a dazzling genius with vision extending far beyond the limitations of the Victorian age.” Well, I'm not quite sure what this means, and unfortunately our understanding of Babbage and his historical context is not greatly illuminated by this short book.Bruce Collier and James MacLachlan have produced an uncritical biography of Babbage that glorifies him as “the Grandfather of the modern computer” rather than shedding new light on his work within the context of nineteenth‐century England. Partly, no doubt, this is due to the remit of this Oxford series and its targeted audience. It is good that history of science and technology is being taken to a wider audience, but unfortunately very little is made of the work many historians have already done. The book, however, does do a useful and lucid job of describing the aims and workings of both the Difference and Analytical Engines, and it has helpful sidebars describing some of the technical aspects necessary to understanding Babbage's objectives and resources.Overall, however, historians may find the eulogizing and whiggish approach of this book a little irritating. The authors are prone to a number of ungrounded remarks, such as the allegation that the government was misguided to pay nearly £300,000 for Marc Brunel to build a tunnel under the Thames, in comparison to the “stingy” amount given to Babbage to build his Difference Engine . To make judgments about past events from the concerns of the present is not particularly fruitful. It was not at all clear to contemporaries that Babbage's engine was worth investing in or, indeed, was possible within the technological parameters then available. As such, perhaps a more interesting question would be: How did Babbage manage to get as much public money as he did in the first place? The authors would have been far more helpful had they actually related industrial Britain to the work of Babbage.Throughout this book readers will be constantly reminded of Babbage's prophetic genius. For example, on page 63 we learn that he devised a scheme to replace the transport of mail by road with a system of elevated wires carrying letters in a metal container between London and Bristol. This inspires the authors to remark: “Babbage would certainly have been overjoyed by e‐mail, by which electronic symbols are transported all over the world in the blink of an eye.” Could it be that Babbage was also the great grandfather of electronic mail? On page 65 we learn that he was also the originator of the idea of having “black boxes” used to record information in case of train or aircraft crashes, while a few pages later the authors reflect: “imagine how much Ada [Lovelace] and Charles would have loved word processing, spreadsheets, and databases!” Some people will no doubt delight in such speculations, and who am I to sour the story? As such this is a useful introduction to twentieth‐century Babbage