Charles Babbage

            Charles Babbage is often called the "father of computing" because of his invention of the Analytical Engine, however many people do not know the details of this very important man's life. Charles Babbage was born in Teignmouth, Devonshire on December 26, 1792, just about that same time that the industrial revolution was beginning. Although not much is really known about his childhood, it is known that he had many brothers and sisters, but most of them died before adulthood.
             Babbage created his first invention, a type of shoes made of books that helped one walk on water, at his father's summer home. This idea was good, but it didn't work, because he would weave too much from side to side and eventually would fall over. It is told that in 1810, at the age of nineteen, Babbage went to Cambridge. There, Babbage studied grammar, literature, and many other important lessons, but he found his obsession to be mathematics, and he read many books on the subject. Babbage's teachers frustrated him greatly though, because none of them could ever answer his questions. He was very good at mathematics, especially calculus, and he soon figured out that not one of his teachers knew as much about it as he did.
             Babbage and some other students formed the Analytical Society, and although the Cambridge mathematics department disliked the students involved, they continued on anyway, because they wanted to make a difference in the world. They noticed mistakes in earlier works and tried to correct them all. They all wanted to, as Babbage so eloquently put, "Let us leave the world a wiser one then we found." But making these corrections was time consuming and Babbage became frustrated with it. He thought it would be fantastic if there were a machine that could produce the right answers the first time, so there would be no human error, and then they wouldn't have to correct anything. This is what started him on building adding machines.