172 CHAELES BABBAGE. 



to complete it for a specific sum. l!^ever had a ministry a nobler oppor- 

 tunity to illustrate its history by the encouragement of science. It wa^, 

 however, all in vain. Art was weighed against gold, and the former, 

 touched the beam. The chancellor of the exchequer, to whom Lord 

 Derby referred the question, pronounced the project as — 



"1. Indefinitelj^ expensive. 



"2. The ultimate success problematical. 



"3. The expenditure utterly incapable of being calculated." 



"This Herostratus of science,'' Mr, Babbage characteristically remarks, 

 "if he escape oblivion, will be linked with the destroyer of the Ephesian 

 Temple." 



It would be unjust to the mLcmory of the great philosophical mechanist 

 were no reference made to the incidental invention of a mechanical 

 notation which Mr. Babbage explained in a paper read before the Eoyal 

 Society in 1826. Dr. Lardner entitled it a discovery of " the utmost 

 practical value," and it has long been adopted as a topic of lectures in 

 institutions all over Europe for the instruction of civil engineers. It 

 came up in this wise: Memory has its limit. There cannot be borne 

 in mind a great variety of motions propagated simultaneously through 

 complicated trains of mechanism. Incompatible motions will encoun- 

 ter each other. The memory can neither guard against nor correct them. 

 Some expedient which at a glance could exhibit what every moving 

 l)iece in the machinery was doing at each instant w^as needed. oSTe- 

 cessity, the mother of invention, suggested to Mr. Babbage a system 

 of signs, by which the mechanist, simply moving his finger along a cer- 

 tain line, could follow out the motion of every piece from effect to cause 

 until he arrived at the prime mover. The same sign which indicated 

 the source of motion indicated also its species. It also divided time 

 into parts, showing what was being done by a machine at any moment. 

 By this means the contriver understood the situation mstmiter, saw as 

 if by intuition the fault, and discovered the niche in which to place the 

 movement required. It also enabled the inventor to dismiss from his 

 mind the arrangement of the mechanism. Like algebraic signs, it re- 

 duced wheels and valves, rods and levers, to an equation. In fact, 

 what algebra is to arithmetic Mr. Babbage's notation was to mechanism. 

 During the construction of some parts of the calculating machinery 

 a question arose as to the best method of producing and arranging a 

 certain series of motions necessary to calculate and print a number. 

 Mr. Babbage, with his assistant, an eminent practical engineer, had 

 so arranged these motions that they might be performed by twelve revo- 

 lutions of the principal axis. It was desirable there should be less. To 

 this end each put himself to work, the engineer to a study of the com- 

 plicated working machinery, the inventor to a consideration of his 

 notation symbols. After a short tiine, by some transposition of these, 

 the latter succeeded in producing the series by eight turns of the axis. 

 Pushing his inquiries still further, he proceeded to ascertain whether 



