# data[].attributes.body
Born in 1791, London, Charles Babbage was a mathematician and engineer often credited as he first person to create a computer.

# data[].attributes.body
Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers. That they were not actually completed was largely because of funding problems and clashes of personality

Babbage directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some modest success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanised. For more than ten years he received government funding for his project, which amounted to £17,000, but eventually the Treasury lost confidence in him.

While Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction-based, the control unit could make conditional jumps, and the machine had a separate I/O unit

# data[].attributes.body
Around the age of eight, Babbage was sent to a country school in Alphington near Exeter to recover from a life-threatening fever. For a short time he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, South Devon, but his health forced him back to private tutors for a time.

Babbage then joined the 30-student Holmwood academy, in Baker Street, Enfield, Middlesex, under the Reverend Stephen Freeman. The academy had a library that prompted Babbage's love of mathematics. He studied with two more private tutors after leaving the academy. The first was a clergyman near Cambridge; through him Babbage encountered Charles Simeon and his evangelical followers, but the tuition was not what he needed. He was brought home, to study at the Totnes school: this was at age 16 or 17.The second was an Oxford tutor, under whom Babbage reached a level in Classics sufficient to be accepted by Cambridge.

Life at Cambridge
Babbage arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1810. He was already self-taught in some parts of contemporary mathematics; he had read in Robert Woodhouse, Joseph Louis Lagrange, and Marie Agnesi. As a result, he was disappointed in the standard mathematical instruction available at the university. In 1812 Babbage transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was the top mathematician there, but did not graduate with honours. He instead received a degree without examination in 1814. He had defended a thesis that was considered blasphemous in the preliminary public disputation; but it is not known whether this fact is related to his not sitting the examination.

# data[].attributes.body
He first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8,000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is the Babbage Engine in action, Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 has 'registers' to hold one number from each of the columns in the table (for example 20, 7, 2). It would add the second difference to the first, then add that result to the function value to compute the next entry in the table.

# data[].attributes.body
During the Crimean War of the 1850s, Babbage broke Vigenère's autokey cipher as well as the much weaker cipher that is called Vigenère cipher today.His discovery was kept a military secret, and was not published. Credit for the result was instead given to Friedrich Kasiski, a Prussian infantry officer, who made the same discovery some years later.However, in 1854, Babbage published the solution of a Vigenère cipher, which had been published previously in the Journal of the Society of Arts In 1855,

# data[].attributes.body
Babbage lived and worked for over 40 years at 1 Dorset Street, Marylebone, where he died, at the age of 79, on 18 October 1871; he was buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery. Babbage died of renal inadequacy (Kidney Failure), secondary to cystitis. During his life he declined both a knighthood and baronetcy.

Fun Fact: Half of Babbage's brain is preserved at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons in London.The other half of Babbage's brain is on display in the Science Museum, London.