Re:Brits and failure to invest... (Score 1)

I agree that Britain has a terrible record on high-tech investment, but this wasn't true in Babbage's case. The man was a technical genius, no doubt, but as a project manager he was a disaster area and most of the blame for not delivering a working model can be squarely laid at his door.

The government funded him lavishly (Babbage had excellent political contacts) and received nothing in return but a series of broken promises. Babbage retaliated by picking fights, holding grudges, and generally being a pain in the neck. A report on the Difference Engine concluded, that it was essentially unnecessary, and it would be far cheaper to continue to produce mathematical tables by hand.

This quote best sums up the tragedy, I think:

"One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as vigorous as ever. He took me through his work-rooms. In the first room I saw parts of the original Calculating Machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before and had even been put to some use. I asked him about its present form. 'I have not finished it because in working at it I came on the idea of my Analytical Machine, which would do all that it was capable of doing and much more. Indeed, the idea was so much simpler that it would have taken more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.'"

"After a few minutes' talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked if I could see it. 'I have never completed it,' he said, 'because I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method, and this rendered it useless to proceed on the old lines.' Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer, 'It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.' I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart."
-- Lord Moulton