At the dawn of the 1960s, 快猫短视频 (4 December 1960), now best known for being the man behind the concept of a programmable computer. Less well known is that he spent 20 years, his personal fortune and a stack of British government money on the project.
Even less well known is how the strain got to him. 鈥淚f your ideas are a hundred years in advance of your times, it is never easy to get your contemporaries to sympathise with them,鈥� we sympathised. 鈥淏ut Babbage clearly made matters far worse than they need have been by his intolerance, irascibility, vainness and unwillingness to compromise. When he died in 1871 he was better known for his vehement hatred of governments, street musicians and barrel organs than for his genius.鈥�
Had he been around in 1976, Babbage would have found life a little more to his liking. We reported then that US on items to construct their own computers (23/30 December 1976). It was the start of a world we now take for granted: not only do most homes have computers, so do most pockets and handbags. As we said: 鈥淪ome believe micro-computers will have more impact on our lives than electricity or automobiles.鈥�
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By 2004, that new world had essentially arrived with the advent of, for example, software that could be given details of a crime and then quickly finger the likely perpetrator by comparing the modus operandi of known villains (4 December 2004).
Critics might argue that this is little more than experienced cops have been doing for decades, but we insisted that the Classification System for Serial Criminal Patterns would not be used cynically to round up the usual suspects. In fact, it would be a money-saver used mainly to fight 鈥渃ommon crimes鈥� which do not usually 鈥渨arrant the resources given to murder enquiries鈥�.
Presumably Charles Babbage would have added organ grinding to any list of 鈥渃ommon crimes鈥�.
(Image credit: Kevin Harvey/Rex Shutterstock)
