Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/77



was born at Totnes in Devonshire on December 26, 1791. His father was a banker and was able to give his son a moderate fortune. Being a sickly child he received a somewhat desultory education at private schools, first at Alphington near Exeter, and later at Endfield near London. It appears that he instructed himself in the elements of Algebra, and that he early manifested a great fondness for it.

When he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1810, he was already acquainted with the text books of Lacroix and other French writers; he had also read the book of Woolhouse which aimed at introducing into Cambridge the Leibnitzian notation for the differential calculus. Among his contemporary graduates he found congenial spirits in Peacock and Herschel, and the three friends, along with some juniors such as Whewell, were wont to breakfast together each Sunday morning and discuss philosophical subjects. At one of these philosophical breakfasts the "Analytical Society" was formed, the object of which as stated by Babbage was "to advocate the principles of pure d-ism in opposition to the dot-age of the University. Babbage was skillful in getting up what the politicians call a good cry. It was while he was yet an undergraduate that an idea occurred to him which ruled the whole of his subsequent career. One evening he was sitting in the rooms of the Analytical Society at Cambridge, his head leaning forward on the table in a dreamy mood, with a table of logarithms lying open before him. Another member, coming into the room and seeing him half asleep, called out "Well, Babbage, what are you dreaming