Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

Author(s)

• Charles Babbage

Some men write their lives to save themselves from ennui, careless of the amount they inflict on their readers. Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them up. Others, again, write their own life from a different motive—from fear that the vampires of literature might make it their prey. I have frequently had applications to write my life, both from my countrymen and from foreigners. Some caterers for the public offered to pay me for it. Others required that I should pay them for its insertion; others offered to insert it without charge. One proposed to give me a quarter of a column gratis, and as many additional lines of eloge as I chose to write and pay for at ten-pence per line. To many of these I sent a list of my works, with the remark that they formed the best life of an author; but nobody cared to insert them. I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work. The remarkable circumstances attending those Calculating Machines, on which I have spent so large a portion of my life, make me wish to place on record some account of their past history. As, however, such a work would be utterly uninteresting to the greater part of my countrymen, I thought it might be rendered less unpalatable by relating some of my experience amongst various classes of society, widely differing from each other, in which I have occasionally mixed. This volume does not aspire to the name of an autobiography. It relates a variety of isolated circumstances in which I have taken part—some of them arranged in the order of time, and others grouped together in separate chapters, from similarity of subject. The selection has been made in some cases from the importance of the matter. In others, from the celebrity of the persons concerned ; whilst several of them furnish interesting illustrations of human character. - Summary by From the Preface

1. Dedication and Preface
2. My Ancestors
3. Childhood
4. Boyhood
5. Cambridge
6. Difference Engine No. 1 Part 1
7. Difference Engine No. 1 Part 2
8. Statement relative to the Difference Engine, drawn up by the late Sir H. Nicolas from the Author’s Papers Part 1
9. Difference Engine No. 2
10. Of the Analytical Engine Part 1
11. Of the Analytical Engine Part 2
12. Of the Mechanical Notation
13. The Exhibition of 1862
14. The Late Prince Consort
15. Recollections of the Duke of Wellington
16. Recollections of Wollaston, Davy, and Rogers
17. Recollections of Laplace, Biot, and Humboldt
18. Experience by Water
19. Experience by Fire
20. Experience Amongst Workmen
21. Picking Locks and Deciphering
22. Experience in St. Giles’s
23. Theatrical Experience
24. Electioneering Experience
25. Scene from a New After-Piece
26. Experience at Courts
27. Experience at Courts
28. Railways
29. Street Nuisances
30. Wit
31. Hints for Travellers
32. Miracles
33. Religion
34. A Vision
35. Various Reminiscences
36. The Author’s Cont­ri­bu­tions to Human Knowledge
37. The Author’s further Cont­ri­bu­tions to Human Knowledge Part 1
38. The Author’s further Cont­ri­bu­tions to Human Knowledge Part 2
39. Results of Science
40. Agreeable Recollections