
ON BABBAGE’S SYSTEM OF MECHANICAL NOTATION AS 
APPLIED TO AUTOMATIC MACHINERY, 
BY 
HOWARD GRUBB, C.F., F.R.A.S. 
Read December 17th, 1877. 
In the year 1826, the celebrated mathematician, Mr. Charles 
Babbage, presented a paper to the Royal Society of London, on 
a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery. 
The ingenious and elegant system Mr. Babbage describes in 
this paper appears to have been paid but little attention to by 
engineers, and I can only find one mechanical author, and that 
of old date, treating of Mr, Babbage’s system. 
The fact of this (as it seems to me), most useful system of 
notation, having been apparently buried in oblivion, has induced 
me to bring the matter under the notice of this Society in the 
hope that it may prove as useful to many others as it has been 
tome. I may also say that I am further induced to notice this 
matter, from the fact that my father, who made considerable use 
of this system in planning his automatic printing, and other 
machinery, found the system capable of extension in directions, 
certainly not OES and perhaps never contemplated, by Mr. 
Babbage. 
I shall first endeavour to explain the object which Mr. Babbage 
had in planning this notation, then the principle of the Meso 
and lastly the uses to which it may be applied. 
Firstly. The object Mr. Babbage aimed at was to supply ‘a 
serious want which he felt existed in graphically representing an 
elaborate piece of machinery. “He desired to devise such a 
method of graphical representation as would present to the 
mind of the mechanic a true representation, not so much 
of the general form and disposition of the small parts, for that 
can be done by ordinary draughtsmanship, but of the quantity 
and nature of the different movements, the time each movement 
occupies, and the sequence of such movements, &c. Such a re- 
presentation could no doubt be made by a series of drawings of 
