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Doron Swade
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The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer Paperback – January 1, 2002

by Doron Swade (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 33 ratings
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A portrait of early nineteenth-century mathematician Charles Babbage describes his efforts to construct the first computing machine more than one century before the invention of the modern computer. Reprint.
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  1. Print length
    624 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Group USA
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    4.75 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0142001449
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0142001448
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Doron Swade, assistant director and head of collections at the Science Museum in London, is an engineer, historian of technology, and a leading authority on the life and work of Charles Babbage.

Doron Swade is Assistant Director and Head of Collections at the Science Museum in London.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Group USA (January 1, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 624 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0142001449
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0142001448
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.75 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 33 ratings

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Doron Swade

Doron Swade

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
33 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Charles Hall
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful combination of history and modern day triumph!
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2001
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Ahhh, the fascinating story of Charles Babbage. For 100 years he was a footnote to mathematical history, for the next 40 years his story was a required paragraph in the preface of every Computer Science text book. In the last few decades there has finally been serious study of his work. Now with this book we have a highly readable compendium of his life and work, with the added excitement of a modern day adventure.
The first 210 pages provide the best description of Babbage's life yet. All the bits and pieces I've read in numbers of other books on Babbage are here, as told by a modern expert who puts it all in perspective. That perspective is essential, as Babbage's life was filled with controversy and conflict.
The last 100 pages of the book tell the story of building one of Babbage's planned-but-never-built calculating engines in the museum where the author works. It is this personal experience with building a working machine from the 150 year old plans that adds the magic "hands on" touch to the author's analysis of Babbage's tale.
This is a highly readable and fascinating book and undoubtedly the best single volume on the legacy of Charles Babbage.
19 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Easy read nice hard cover book
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2014
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This was an easy Read.. Also very interesting.If your a geek like me you will like this book. Also if you like mechanics you will appreciate.... Charles Babbage...
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Todd
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the read
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2020
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This book gives a full account on a mans lifetime dedication to his Differential Machines. I learned so much more than I expected from having read the story of Charles Babbage and those he interacted with.
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dwc309
5.0 out of 5 stars Well written engrossing book.
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2014
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This is a well written book that gives a really good feel for how the engine fit into the machining accuracy of the time, how Babbage developed the idea, why he didn't finish it, and how the engine fits into the big picture. I really enjoyed it.
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Dan K.
5.0 out of 5 stars Anyone interested in the dawn of computing will be inspired ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015
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Anyone interested in the dawn of computing will be inspired by the machine built by Charles Babbage. The requirements for the accuracy of his design brought about the need for hardware standardization. Giant leaps in technology all came about through Mr. Babbage's machine.
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Avid Reader
4.0 out of 5 stars Well-done dip into computing history and personality
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2011
Charles Babbage's achievements were lost to history -- or at least lost to most of us -- for more than a century. A handful of people who loved the history of technology or who were experts on life in Georgian London were aware of this man's astounding range of activities. But for the rest of us, blissfully wasting our time on Facebook and Netflix, thoughts of how we got to this point are few and far between. "The Difference Engine" helps to bridge that gap and to give us some understanding of the astounding achievements of the scientific era.

The first 2/3 of the book looks at the life of Babbage, with a special focus on his efforts to develop the first truly automated calculating machine. Others prior to Babbage and working as his contemporaries in the early 19th century tried to do the same thing, but Babbage took it a step further by developing designs for a machine that truly could do complicated calculations without the intervention of a skilled intermediary. Anyone with a very minimal working knowledge of math could operate his Difference Machine -- if the machine could be built.

The author of "Difference Machine" explains with great clarity the importance of the machine and its advances as compared to competing machines. He also explains that extraordinary work done by Babbage and draftsmen and machinists he hired to fashion the necessary 12,000 parts to tiny tolerance levels with hand tools. And the author shows how close Babbage came to realizing his dream.

It's quite a story. The failures of Babbage over more than 40 years to build his machine to a full scale are the human-interest side of the story. While Babbage was a gifted mathematician and inventor, his vision was so far beyond the manufacturing skills of the day that his machine became impossibly costly to build. When his technical demands were coupled with his astoundingly abrasive personality, Babbage lost support of goverment agents about a decade into his work.

Rather than going away, however, Babbage then embarked on an even more incredible pair of quests. First, he expanded the capabilities of his Difference Machine by designing an Analytical Machine, which arguably was the precursor to programmable computers. He was one small leap (and he wrote a couple of cryptic statements that indicated he had made the leap) from using his Analytical Machine to manipulate numbers to using it to manipulate symbols -- that is, what we consider a computer today.

Alas, the Analytical Machine never made it past the stage of incomplete, but detailed drawings. And so, Babbage returned to the Difference Machine, this time greatly improving its efficiency with ingenius designs for storing and carrying numbers and recording the result of each answer.

Along the way, he invented or greatly improved everything from drafting designs to train cow-catchers to an opthalmologic device, o a new theory to explain the presence of God (God is the ultimate computer programmer, so what we perceive of as a random event that God would not let happen, such as an earthquake, is actually part of God's programming to throw variation into the scheme). Oh, and he ran one of the most popular salons in London for two decades.

The book describes these other feats of Babbage in passing. And along the way, it does a great job of exploring and exploding myths about Babbage -- such as whether he really is the "father of the computer" (not really), whether he or his doubters were fools (neither), and whether much of his failure is due to his rash temper (yes).

But then the book takes this weird turn at the end. The author describes the achievement by the Science Museum in England to build his smaller Difference Engine in time to celebrate Babbage's 200th birthday. The author was the curator of computers at the time, and he gives a highly personal and strange tale of the project. Along the way, the author criticizes the museum's directors for charging admission, building exhibits that appeal to the public, pulling funds, and doing dog-and-pony shows for the board members. He also skewers IBM for backing out of a semi-promise to fund the project. And he writes about meetings in dank car parks and manipulating the press to achieve maximum attention and coloring Babbage's original drawings with tea bags (I would call this vandalizing them) in order to make them look more sepai-toned for photos. Very strange. And yet, you can see him on YouTube today, showing the operation of the Difference Machine in a shining glory that Charles Babbage could only envision in his lifetime.
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Kerim Suner
1.0 out of 5 stars I ordered a "new" book and received a "used" book.
Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2023
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I ordered a "new" book and received a "used" book.
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Maureen Jacobs
3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Engines
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2002
This book has 2 basic parts. First, is the discussion of Babbage's life and his computing engines. Second, is the author's modern-day story of attempting to complete Babbage's Difference Engine, a feat which Babbage himself was unable to do. I picked up this book for the first part. I wanted to learn about Babbage and how his engines worked. While the author gives a wonderful account of Babbage's life and methodology, he does not clearly describe HOW these engines function. I realize that the engines are extremely complex, but a chapter on the functioning of the Difference Engine trial piece and some diagrams on its operations would have been much appreciated. Unfortunately, as were Babbage's contemporaries, we are left mainly in dark as to how simply turning a crank can produce the necessary additions. The author also never fully explains the "method of finite differences" upon which the function of the difference engine is based.
The most amazing part of the book is the overview of Babbage's design for the Analytical Engine- the first programmable computer. It is amazingly similar in concept to today's modern computers, but it uses motion through metal gears and cams, instead of electricity through logic gates and wires. I expected to be bored by the modern-day story, but I actually was interested in the process of reconstructing this 19th century machine. It was enlightening to see how the same problems Babbage faced 150 years before troubled engineers today.
Overall, I recommend this book for those curious about Babbage and his engines. However, the writing seems jerky and unorganized in parts, and there is little technical description of the engines' functionality.
23 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

glen cochrane
4.0 out of 5 stars The Babbage Machine - Then and Now
Reviewed in Canada on January 23, 2014
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A very interesting story, the book is divided into two distinct parts: that of Babbage (his life and his attempt to build his machines) and that of the author's lead role in building one of Babbage's machines in the 1980s-90s. After reading the former section, I wondered how the second, modern-day narrative would read. As it is, the description of the modern project illuminates much of the scope and many of the obstacles that Babbage faced, or didn't get the chance to face, a century and a half earlier. The modern day builders were up against a deadline, however, despite all of the technical advantages, and advantages of hindsight, the project was an incredible undertaking of funding and paperwork. The size of the machine and the amount of working parts make me wonder if Babbage really knew the extent of the project that he spent his life working on, or if his true genius lay in the concept and generating ideas for the future.

One of the great things about the book is the valid debate that it often alludes to - a question that was valid then as it is now: How is building such a machine justified?

The presence of the book (as the larger project) is the author's answer in itself. It was an interesting question for me to think about, as I read through the plight of Babbage and the context that he worked in. Several players in the tale strongly oppose the spending of resources to build a machine, and the book often admits that they are right to think so. This type of question, this book, made me think about the benefits of progress in different ways than intended, the need for people like Babbage to dream, take risks, and fail, for the benefit of a larger procession. And mostly, the separation of ideas and concepts for furthering knowledge, vs the practicality and means (not to mention time frame) for putting into motion ideas.

The book is honest and fair. It gave me a glimpse of a time in western culture where technology was a garden for invention and forward thought...not that much unlike now, in the age of rapidly advancing communication and information design. The two stories of the Difference Engine, then and now, are really a nice comparison of context.
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