Charles Babbage Quotes

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Perhaps the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour amongst the persons who perform the work.

Charles Babbage
Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

Charles Babbage
The half minute which we daily devote to the winding-up of our watches is an exertion of labour almost insensible; yet, by the aid of a few wheels, its effect is spread over the whole twenty-four hours.

Charles Babbage
Surely, if knowledge is valuable, it can never be good policy in a country far wealthier than Tuscany, to allow a genius like Mr. Dalton's, to be employed in the drudgery of elementary instruction.

Charles Babbage
The extreme accuracy required in some of our modern inquiries has, in some respects, had an unfortunate influence, by favouring the opinion, that no experiments are valuable, unless the measures are most minute, and the accordance amongst them most perfect.

Charles Babbage
Mr. Herschel … brought with him the calculations of the computers, and we commenced the tedious process of verification. After a time many discrepancies occurred, and at one point these discordances were so numerous that I exclaimed, "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam," to which Herschel replied, "It is quite possible."

Charles Babbage
Mill, in speaking of Hume's celebrated principle, "that nothing is credible which is contradictory to experience, or at variance with the laws of nature," calls it a very plain and harmless proposition, being, in effect, nothing more than that whatever is contradictory to a complete induction is incredible. Admit the existence of a Deity, and the possibility of a miracle is the natural consequence. No doubt our examination of the evidence which sustains an unusual phenomenon should be most carefully conducted ; but we must not measure the credibility or incredibility of an event by the narrow sphere of our own experience, nor forget that there is a Divine energy which overrides what we familiarly call the laws of nature.

Charles Babbage
Time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.

Charles Babbage
In mathematical science, more than in all others, it happens that truths which are at one period the most abstract, and apparently the most remote from all useful application, become in the next age the bases of profound physical inquiries, and in the succeeding one, perhaps, by proper simplification and reduction to tables, furnish their ready and daily aid to the artist and the sailor.

Charles Babbage
A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power.

Charles Babbage
Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong.

Charles Babbage
A young man passes from our public schools to the universities, ignorant almost of the elements of every branch of useful knowledge.

Charles Babbage
We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

Charles Babbage
There is, however, another purpose to which academies contribute. When they consist of a limited number of persons, eminent for their knowledge, it becomes an object of ambition to be admitted on their list.

Charles Babbage
The quantity of meaning compressed into small space by algebraic signs, is another circumstance that facilitates the reasonings we are accustomed to carry on by their aid.

Charles Babbage
What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put something into it.

Charles Babbage
There are in the Exhibition some beautiful examples of such lace amongst the productions of other countries as well as of our own. They are made by the united labor of many women. The cost of a piece of lace will consist of:

1. The remuneration to the artist who designs the pattern.
2. The cost of the raw material.
3. The cost of the labour of a large number of women working on it for many months.

Charles Babbage
Some kinds of nails, such as those used for defending the soles of coarse shoes, called hobnails, require a particular form of the head, which is made by the stroke of a die.

Charles Babbage
The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation.

Charles Babbage
The golden age of mathematical literature is undoubtedly past.

Charles Babbage
Those from whose pocket the salary is drawn, and by whose appointment the officer was made, have always a right to discuss the merits of their officers, and their modes of exercising the duties they are paid to perform.

Charles Babbage
The whole of arithmetic now appeared within the grasp of mechanism.

Charles Babbage
The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery...As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science.

Charles Babbage
I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.

Charles Babbage
No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them.

Charles Babbage