English mathematician who devised a precursor of the computer.

He designed an analytical engine, a general-purpose mechanical computing device for performing different calculations according to a program input on punched cards (an idea borrowed from the Jacquard loom).

This device was never built, but it embodied many of the principles on which digital computers are based.

As a student at Cambridge, Babbage assisted John Herschel with his astronomical calculations and thought they could be better done by machines.

His mechanical calulator, or difference engine, of 1822, which could compute squares to six places of decimals, got him a commission from the British Admiralty for an expanded version.

But this project was abandoned in favour of the analytical engine, which he worked on for the rest of his life.

The difference engine could perform only one function, once it was set up.

The analytical engine was intended to perform many functions; it was to store numbers and be capable of working to a programme.

Babbage was born in Totnes, Devon.

His book On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures 1832 is an analysis of industrial production systems and their economics.

In 1991, the British Science Museum completed Babbage's second difference engine (to demonstrate that it would have been possible with the materials then available).

It evaluates polynomials up to the seventh power, with 30-figure accuracy.