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BABBAGE, Charles. "On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery." In Philosophical Transactions 116, pt. 3 (1826): 250-65.
Details
BABBAGE, Charles. "On a method of expressing by signs the action of machinery." In Philosophical Transactions 116, pt. 3 (1826): 250-65.
4o. 4 plates. Whole part: 19 engraved plates, numbered III-XXI. Original plain blue wrappers, uncut. Boxed.
FIRST EDITION in journal form. Babbage's first publication of his system of mechanical notation that enabled him to describe the logic and operation of his machines on paper as they would be fabricated in metal. Babbage later stated that "Without the aid of this language I could not have invented the Analytical Engine; nor do I believe that any machinery of equal complexity can ever be contrived without the assistance of that or of some other equivalent language. The Difference Engine No. 2 ... is entirely described by its aid" (Babbage 1864, 104).
Babbage considered his mechanical notation system to be one of his finest inventions, and thought it should be widely implemented. It was a source of frustration to him that no other machine designer adopted it (probably because no other engineer during Babbage's time attempted to build machines as logically and mechanically complex as Babbage's). More than one hundred years later, in the 1930s, when developments in logic were applied to switching systems Claude Shannon demonstrated in his famous master's thesis that Boolean algebra could be applied to the same types of problems for which Babbage had designed his mechanical notation system Van Sinderen 1980, no. 27. OOC 37.
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FIRST EDITION in journal form. Babbage's first publication of his system of mechanical notation that enabled him to describe the logic and operation of his machines on paper as they would be fabricated in metal. Babbage later stated that "Without the aid of this language I could not have invented the Analytical Engine; nor do I believe that any machinery of equal complexity can ever be contrived without the assistance of that or of some other equivalent language. The Difference Engine No. 2 ... is entirely described by its aid" (Babbage 1864, 104).
Babbage considered his mechanical notation system to be one of his finest inventions, and thought it should be widely implemented. It was a source of frustration to him that no other machine designer adopted it (probably because no other engineer during Babbage's time attempted to build machines as logically and mechanically complex as Babbage's). More than one hundred years later, in the 1930s, when developments in logic were applied to switching systems Claude Shannon demonstrated in his famous master's thesis that Boolean algebra could be applied to the same types of problems for which Babbage had designed his mechanical notation system Van Sinderen 1980, no. 27. OOC 37.
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