CHARLES BABBAGE, 163 



D'Arblay, and others, an analytical society for tlie translation of La- 

 CToix's Differential and Integral Calculus, maintaining that the work 

 needed no comment; that the "d's" of Leibnitz were perfect, and con- 

 signing to perdition all who supported the heresy of JSTewtou's " dots." 

 It being hinted that the society was infidel, the young student replied, 

 " No ! We advocate the principles of pure ' D '-ism in 0})position to the 

 ' Dot '-age of the university." He studied the game of chess and beat 

 every expert that was brought against him ; formed a ghost club to col- 

 lect all reliable evidence of the supernatural ; joined high players at 

 whist in order to show them that, staking only slnllings, he could win at 

 guinea-points; embarked in boating not more from the manual labor 

 than from the intellectual art of sailing; and by making a collection ol 

 examples of mathematical problems, in which the notation of Leibnitz 

 was employed, he made it for the interest of tutors of the colleges to 

 abandon the symbols of Newton. 



During Babbage's college life the course of his studies led him into a 

 critical examination of the logarithmic tables then in use. The value 

 of these tables had long been recognized in every part of the civilized 

 world. Large sums of money were expended in their preparation, and 

 the greatest care produced only proximate accuracy in the calculations. 

 The young mathematician set himself to consider whether, in the con- 

 struction of these tables, in place of the perturbable processes of the 

 intellect, it were not possible to substitute the unerring movements of 

 mechanism. The thought was perpetually recurring during the latter 

 portion of his college course. He gave up his leisure time to experi- 

 ments having this end in view — discussed the subject with Herschel, 

 Eyan, Maule, and others of his class who were interested in philsophical 

 mechanism, and was no sooner graduated than he visited the various 

 centers of machine labor in England and on the continent, that he might 

 become familiar with the combinations in use and study their functions. 

 Keturning home, he began to sketch arrangements for a machine 

 by which all mathematical tables might be computed by one uniform 

 process. 



The idea of a calculating machine did not originate with young 

 Babbage. Pascal, nearly two hundred years before, had constructed, 

 when in his nineteenth year, an ingenious machine for making arithmetical 

 calculations, which excited admiration. In his Pensees, alluding to 

 this engine, he remarks: "ia. machine arithmetique fait des effets qui aj)- 

 prochent plus de la pensee que tout ce que font les animaux ; mais elle ne 

 faitrien qui puissef aire direqit'elle a de la volonte conime lesanimauxP Sub- 

 sequently, Leibnitz invented a machine by which arithmetical computa- 

 tions could be made. Polenus, a learned and ingenious Italian, put to- 

 gether wheels by which multiplication was performed; and in the vari- 

 ous industrial exhibitions since 1851, contrivances for performing cer- 

 tain arithmetical processes have been exhibited. The principle upon 



