FIRST EDITION OF BABBAGE’S ESTEEMED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BABBAGE, Charles. Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter brown calf gilt, raised bands, green morocco spine label, marbled boards, endpapers and edges. $3800.

First edition of Babbage’s autobiography, a principal source of our knowledge of Babbage’s Difference and Analytical Engines, including Babbage’s only published account of his Difference Engine. With engraved frontispiece illustration of Difference Engine No. 1 drawn by Babbage’s son Benjamin.

"The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery… As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science" (Passages, 136-37). Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1 was the autonomous printing mechanical calculator that used the method of differences to produce completely error-free mathematical tables. Babbage went on to invent the Analytical Engine, a universal calculator which was to be capable of any type of mathematical calculation; its design, discussed in Chapter VII, embodied "almost all the important functions of the modern digital computer" (Campbell-Kelly, 'Introduction to Babbage,' Passages from the Life of a Philosopher [1994], 23). With Babbage's own bibliography of his published works. Origins of Cyberspace 84.

Slight rubbing to extremities of handsome contemporary binding; a bit of foxing to first few leaves, interior otherwise fine.