Charles Babbage spent decades designing mechanical computing engines, but he never worked alone. A surprising number of people played critical roles in his life’s work, from the mathematician who wrote the first computer algorithm to the craftsman who built the engine’s parts, the government that funded it, and the family member who carried it forward after Babbage’s death.
Ada Lovelace and the First Algorithm
Ada Lovelace is the most famous of Babbage’s collaborators, and for good reason. She met Babbage in June 1833, when she was just 18 years old, after an introduction by her tutor Mary Somerville, a prominent scientific writer and polymath. Lovelace went on to become Babbage’s intellectual partner on the Analytical Engine, his ambitious design for a general-purpose computing machine.
Lovelace’s most celebrated contribution appears in what’s known as Note G, part of a longer set of notes she published alongside her translation of an Italian mathematician’s description of the Analytical Engine. In Note G, she laid out a step-by-step sequence of instructions for computing Bernoulli numbers, a series important in mathematics. Scholars affirm that this constitutes an algorithm, making it the first computer program ever written. But her contributions went beyond a single algorithm. She grasped something Babbage himself was less vocal about: that a computing engine could manipulate symbols and ideas, not just numbers. Her vision of what the machine could become was, in some ways, ahead of Babbage’s own framing of it.
Mary Somerville’s Behind-the-Scenes Role
Without Mary Somerville, Babbage and Lovelace might never have crossed paths. Somerville was one of the leading scientific minds of her era and served as Lovelace’s mathematics tutor. When she introduced the young Lovelace to Babbage in 1833, she set in motion the collaboration that would produce the most enduring intellectual contribution to Babbage’s legacy. Somerville was also part of Babbage’s broader scientific circle, helping to sustain the network of thinkers who took his ideas seriously.
John Herschel and the Spark
The entire project arguably began because of John Herschel. In 1821, Babbage and Herschel were checking mathematical tables together and finding error after error. Frustrated, Babbage reportedly declared, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.” That moment crystallized the idea that would consume the rest of his life: building a machine to automate the production of accurate mathematical tables. Herschel, a distinguished astronomer and mathematician in his own right, remained a lifelong friend and scientific peer who helped Babbage refine his early thinking about mechanical calculation.
Joseph Clement, the Master Craftsman
Babbage could design engines on paper, but he needed someone to actually build them. Joseph Clement was one of the finest machinists in England, and Babbage hired him to construct the Difference Engine. Clement’s workshop produced the precision parts that made the partial prototype possible, and his skills were essential to turning Babbage’s drawings into metal.
The relationship, however, was troubled from the start. Babbage wanted Clement to relocate his workshop closer to Babbage’s house. Clement refused unless he was compensated, and the dispute escalated until Clement quit the project entirely in 1833. Construction never resumed. There were suspicions that Clement had dragged the work out deliberately to profit from it. One of Clement’s own workmen wrote to Babbage alleging that Clement chose to “doze over the construction year after year for the purpose of making one thing after another.” When Clement left, he retained the specialized tools built for the project, a painful loss that effectively ended any chance of restarting the work with another craftsman.
The British Government as Funder
Babbage’s engines were enormously expensive, and the British government was his primary financial backer. The Treasury initially provided £1,500 for the Difference Engine, and Babbage contributed £1,975 of his own money. As costs grew, the government disbursed another £7,500 in late 1829 and early 1830 to keep the project alive after a nine-month pause. By the time the project was finally cancelled, the government had spent a total of £17,000 on what one official described as “a glimmer in an inventor’s eye.”
The end came in 1842, nineteen years after Babbage had started. Part of the problem was Babbage himself. He told the government he had conceived of the Analytical Engine, a far more powerful machine that made the Difference Engine obsolete, and suggested it might be cheaper to abandon the first project and fund the new one instead. This was not what politicians who had already spent £17,000 wanted to hear. Prime Minister Robert Peel pushed to cancel the venture, and the unfinished Difference Engine ended up on display at the Science Museum in London.
Georg and Edvard Scheutz
Babbage never finished his engines, but his published designs inspired others to try. Georg Scheutz, a Swedish publisher, and his son Edvard used Babbage’s concepts to build the first working printing calculator. Their machine was exhibited at the 1855 World’s Fair in Paris and then sold to the Dudley Observatory in Schenectady, New York. It became the first computing machine to carry out computations under a U.S. government contract. Babbage, to his credit, championed the Scheutz engine rather than resenting it, recognizing that a working version of his ideas mattered more than who built it.
Henry Prevost Babbage
After Charles Babbage died in 1871, his youngest son Henry Prevost Babbage took up the unfinished work. Henry assembled a hand-operated printing calculator based on the plans for the mill (the processing unit) of the Analytical Engine. This machine could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It was a simplified version of his father’s grand vision, but it demonstrated that the core designs were sound. Henry completed this work in 1910, nearly four decades after his father’s death, making him one of the most patient champions of Babbage’s legacy.
Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan, a prominent logician and mathematician, tutored Ada Lovelace alongside Mary Somerville. His rigorous training in formal logic helped shape Lovelace’s ability to think systematically about computation. While De Morgan’s connection to Babbage was more indirect, his influence on Lovelace’s mathematical sophistication made him an important contributor to the quality of work she brought to her collaboration with Babbage.