Abstract
Charles Babbage is considered (along with George Boole) to be one of the grandfathers of computing. He made contributions to several areas including mathematics, statistics, astronomy, philosophy, railways and lighthouses. He founded the British Statistical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society.
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- 1.
The power series expansion of the sine function is given by \( \mathrm{Sin}(x) = x - {x^3}/3! + {x^5}/5! - {x^7}/7! + \cdots \). The power series expansion for the cosine function is given by \( \mathrm{Cos}(x) = 1 - {x^2}/2! + {x^4}/4! - {x^6}/6! + \cdots \). Functions may be approximated by interpolation and the approximation of a function by a polynomial of degree n requires n + 1 points on the curve for the interpolation. That is, the curve formed by the polynomial of degree n that passes through the n + 1 points of the function to be approximated is an approximation to the function. The error function also needs to be considered.
- 2.
Each wheel has ten teeth and represents a decimal digit.
- 3.
The Jacquard loom was invented by Joseph Jacquard in 1801. It is a mechanical loom which used the holes in the punched cards to control the weaving of patterns in a fabric. The use of punched cards allowed complex designs to be woven from the pattern defined on the punched card. Each punched card corresponds to one row of the design and the cards were appropriately ordered. It was very easy to change the pattern of the fabric being weaved on the loom, as this simply involved changing the cards.
Reference
Menabrea LF (1842) Sketch of the analytical engine. Invented by Charles Babbage (trans: Lovelace LA). Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève
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© 2013 Springer-Verlag London
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O’Regan, G. (2013). Charles Babbage. In: Giants of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5340-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5340-5_6
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