62 



BABBAGE, CHAKLES. 



ministry, which office he resigned in 1868. 

 Like his brother, he is a tirm adherent of the 

 principles of the German Liberal party, and 

 may be regarded as the leader of this party 

 among the high aristocracy. He was married 

 on August 18, 1851, to the Countess Ernestine 

 Festetics, the sister of the wife of his brother 

 Adolf. 



Count Julius Andrassy, who, in November, 

 1871, was called by the Emperor of Austria to 

 the portfolio of the ministry of Foreign Af- 

 fairs for the whole monarchy as successor of 

 Count von Beust (without, however, receiving 

 the title Chancellor of the Empire), was born 

 on May 28, 1823. The count entered public 

 life at an early age. He figured prominently 



in 1848, when he was a member of Kossutli's 

 ministry. After the collapse of the Hungarian 

 rebellion, he fled to foreign countries. He re- 

 turned after an absence of several years' du- 

 ration, in consequence of the imperial Austrian 

 amnesty for political offences, issued in 1855. 

 "When Hungary regained her ancient Constitu- 

 tion, Andrassy, who belonged to the party of 

 Deak, was elected a member of the Diet, and 

 subsequently (February 24, 1867) appointed 

 President of the Hungarian ministry. Two 

 brothers of the minister, Mano and Aladar, 

 took important parts in the military and civil 

 events which transpired in the year 1848 in 

 favor of a revolution within the Austrian Em- 

 pire. 



B 



BABBAGE, CHARLES, LL. D., F. E. S., an 

 English mathematician and philosophical 

 mechanist, the inventor of the calculating-ma- 

 chine, born December 26, 1792; died in Lon- 

 don, October 20, 1871. He was educated at 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, where he early de- 

 veloped that fondness for mathematical studies 

 which characterized him throughout his long 

 life. In the prosecution of these studies he 

 found that the logarithmic tables in use were 

 extremely faulty and inaccurate, although they 

 had been prepared at very heavy expense. 

 This inaccuracy was partially due to the errors 

 in the observations of the astronomers who 

 furnished the data by which they were calcu- 

 lated, and partly probably to what is called 

 the " the personal equation " of each astron- 

 omer, which induced variations slight in them- 

 selves but momentous in their results. Mr. 

 Babbage hereupon set himself to consider 

 whether it was not possible to substitute, for 

 these perturbable processes of the intellect, the 

 unerring movements of mechanism, in the 

 preparation of logarithmic tables. For this 

 purpose he visited the best machine and engine 

 shops both in England and on the Continent, 

 inspected their mechanism of wheels, levers, 

 valves, indicators, etc., and studied their vari- 

 ous functions and capacities, and, on his return 

 to England in 1821, undertook to direct the 

 construction of a "difference-engine" for the 

 Government. Another result of his Conti- 

 nental tour was the preparation of his admi- 

 rable treatise on " The Economy of Manufac- 

 tures," which was translated into French and 

 German, and led the way to many other works 

 on the subject. By 1833 a portion of the 

 machine was put together, and it was found to 

 perform its work with all the precision that 

 had been predicted of it. Mr. Babbage im- 

 mediately prepared his "Tables of Logarithms 

 of the Natural Numbers," from 1 to 108,000, 

 a work which was well received in all parts 

 of Europe, into most of the languages of 

 which it was speedily translated. In 1828 



Mr. Babbage was elected to fill the chair of 

 the mathematical professorship at Cambridge, 

 once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton, and he 

 continued to discharge the duties of that office 

 for eleven years. During this period he de- 

 voted all his leisure to the perfection of his 

 machine, although he received no remunera- 

 tion whatever for his services. In 1833, for 

 some reason at present unexplained, the con- 

 struction of the calculating-machine was sus- 

 pended, and was not subsequently resumed. 

 Mr. Babbage was a member of the chief learned 

 societies of London and Edinburgh, and has 

 contributed largely to their Transactions, was 

 the author of " Translation of the Differen- 

 tial and Integral Calculus of La Croix," and 

 " The Laws of Mechanical Notation" (privately 

 printed). He also published, in 1837, "The 

 Ninth Bridgewater Treatise ; " a fragment de- 

 signed at once to refute an opinion supposed 

 to be implied in the first volume of that series, 

 that ardent devotion to mathematical studies 

 is unfavorable to faith, and also to give speci- 

 mens of the defensive aid which the evidences 

 of Christianity may receive from the science 

 of numbers. In consequence, perhaps, in part, 

 of the obstacles which beset his life-work, 

 Prof. Babbage was inclined to take a de- 

 sponding view of the state of science in Eng- 

 land. This, first expressed in his work on 

 the " Decline of Science," published in 1829, 

 was still more fully declared in " The Great 

 Exhibition," published in 1851. In Novem- 

 ber, 1832, he contested, though unsuccessfully, 

 the representation of Finsbury in Parliament 

 in the advanced Liberal interest. He made 

 no subsequent attempt to enter political life. 

 Prof. Babbage was a very voluminous writer, 

 on scientific subjects, mostly. In 1851 he 

 published a list of more than eighty scien- 

 tific treatises, essays, and papers, published up 

 to that time. The greater part of these were 

 on mathematical topics ; many of them on the 

 relations of mathematics to practical life, as in 

 logarithms, mechanics, electricity, and mag- 



