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in 1872 (including the names of Cayley and Clifford), to report upon the feasibility of the design, recorded their opinion that its successful realisation might mark an epoch in the history of computation equally memorable with that of the introduction of logarithms (Report, 1878, p. 100); yet did not counsel the attempt, the state of the drawings not being such as to admit of any reasonable estimate as to cost, strength, or durability, being founded upon them. This extraordinary monument of inventive genius accordingly remains, and will doubtless for ever remain, a 'theoretical possibility.'
Babbage occupied the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge during eleven years (1828–39), but delivered no lectures. He attended in 1828 the meeting of 'Naturforscher' at Berlin, and the scientific congress of Turin in 1840, when he was received with singular and unexpected favour by the king, Charles Albert (see chap. xxiv. of his Passages in the Life of a Philosopher). The drawings and models of the analytical engine exhibited by him on that occasion formed the subject of a valuable essay by Menabrea (Bibl. Un. de Genève, t. xli. October 1842), translated, with copious notes, by Ada, Lady Lovelace (Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, iii. 666). His outspoken attack upon the management of the Royal Society in a volume entitled 'The Decline of Science in England' (1830) contributed materially to the origin of the British Association in the following year. Of this body he acted as one of the trustees during six years (1832–8), and originated the statistical section at the Cambridge meeting in 1833. The foundation, moreover, of the Statistical Society of London on 15 March 1834 was mainly his work. Amongst his ingenious ideas, that of signalling by 'occulting solar lights,' brought into practice by the Russians during the siege of Sebastopol, deserves mention. It had been recommended by him as a mode of identification for lighthouses (see his tract. Notes respecting Lighthouses, 1852). He twice—in 1832 and 1834—unsuccessfully contested the borough of Finsbury on liberal principles. Nor were what he regarded as his equitable claims to remunerative employment under government recognised. He was, however, a member of scientific bodies in all parts of the world, including the Paris Academy of Moral Sciences, the Royal Irish and American Academies.
In his latter years Babbage came before the public chiefly as the implacable foe of organ-grinders. He considered that one-fourth of his entire working power had been destroyed by audible nuisances, to which his highly-strung nerves rendered him peculiarly sensitive. In the decay of other faculties, his interest and memory never failed for the operations of the extensive workshops attached to his house. There what might be called the wreckage of a brilliant and strenuous career lay scattered, and thence, after his death on 18 Oct. 1871, some fragmentary portions of the marvellous engine destined to have indefinitely quickened the application of science to every department of human life, were collected and removed to the South Kensington Museum.
Of the eighty works enumerated by Babbage himself (Passages, &c pp. 493–6) scarcely one, except the 'Economy of Manufactures,' can be regarded as a finished performance. The rest are mostly sketches or enlarged pamphlets, keen and suggestive, but incomplete. The 'Comparative View of the various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives' (1826), however, though not exempt from error, was a highly useful work, and one of the first attempts to popularise the subject. It contained a table of mortality deduced from the experience of the Equitable Society, to the construction of which Babbage had been led by his appointment as actuary to the Protector Life Assurance Company (No. 1) on its establishment in 1824 (see Walford's Insurance Cyclopædia, iii. 10), The book was reviewed at length in the 'Quarterly' and 'Edinburgh' Reviews (January and March, 1827), was translated into German, and its table of mortality adopted by the Life Assurance Bank of Gotha, founded in 1829. The 'Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000' (1827), to the preparation of which Babbage devoted singular care, is still in repute. Several foreign editions were printed from the stereotyped plates. The 'Ninth Bridgewater Treatise' (1837, 2nd edition 1838), a work nobly planned, but very partially executed, was remarkable as one of the earliest attempts to reconcile breaches of continuity with the government of the universe by law, and vindicated the serviceableness of mathematics to religion. A volume entitled 'The Exposition of 1851; or Views of the Industry, the Science, and the Government of England' (1851), is the diatribe of a disappointed man, and, like his autobiographical 'Passages from the Life of a Philosopher' (1864), is disfigured by personal allusions, in giving utterance to which he wronged his better nature.
[Month. Not. R. Astr. Soc. xxxii. 101; Times, 23 Oct. 1871; Athenæum, 28 Oct. 1871; Ib. 14 Oct. and 16 Dec. 1848 (De Morgan); Weld's Hist. R. Society, ii. chap. xi.; Nature, v. 28; Ann. Reg. 1871, p. 159.]
