Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/80

 Government was induced to apply to the Royal Society for an opinion on the merits and utility of the invention; it appointed a committee which reported favorably. The Government advanced £1500 and work was started in 1823. Babbage superintended the work, and he employed a mechanical engineer, named Clement, whose workshop was in Lambeth, to execute his plans. The construction of a Difference Engine was begun having six orders of differences, each consisting of about twenty places of figures, and provided with mechanism to print the results. It was called an Engine, because after being started with the proper differences for computing a table the results would be produced merely by power applied to a shaft.

Three years later (1826) the Lucasian professorship of mathematics at Cambridge became vacant. There were three candidates; French, who was the head of one of the colleges; Airy, afterwards astronomer royal; and Babbage. The appointment is made by the heads of the colleges, and in this case they were quite prepared to appoint a candidate from their own number who was more proficient in divinity and Hebrew than in mathematics. This was Newton's chair, but since his time mathematics had declined at Cambridge and was only now beginning to revive. Babbage threatened legal proceedings, with the result French retired and Airy was elected. Airy resided and lectured, the first Lucasian professor who had done so for many years; two years later he changed to the professorship of Astronomy, and his former rival Babbage was elected. This was in 1828; although Babbage held this professorship until 1839 he did not reside or lecture; his mind was completely absorbed with anxiety about the success and fame of his computing machine. However, with a view of delivering a course of lectures, he collected the material and published a book called Economy of Machinery and Manufacture which he dedicated to the University of Cambridge. The object of the volume is to point out the effects and the advantages which arise from the use of machines; to endeavor to classify their modes of action and to trace the consequences of applying machinery to supersede the skill and power of the human arm. Babbage wrote