Simon Schaffer

Babbage's Calculating Engines and the Factory System

In: Réseaux, 1996, volume 4 n°2. pp. 271-298.

Abstract
Summary: The English mathematician Charles Babbage, who during the first half of the nineteenth century invented the
precursors of today's computers, was keenly interested in the economic issues of the Victorian era. His calculating engines were
an application of contemporary theories on the division of labour and provided models for the rationalisation of production.
Bahhage's ideas contributed to the dehumanisation of labour hut were also the source of major discoveries. The mathematician's
history was closely linked to that of the industrial revolution, cradled in England, the 'workshop of the world'. This article recalls
the effervescence of that period.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Schaffer Simon. Babbage's Calculating Engines and the Factory System. In: Réseaux, 1996, volume 4 n°2. pp. 271-298.

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/reso_0969-9864_1996_num_4_2_3315
BABBAGE'S CALCULATING

ENGINES AND THE FACTORY

SYSTEM

Simon SCHAFFER

Summary: The English mathematician Charles Babbage, who during

the first half of the nineteenth century invented the precursors of today's
computers, was keenly interested in the economic issues of the Victorian
era. His calculating engines were an application of contemporary
theories on the division of labour and provided models for the

271
Simon SCHAFFER

rationalisation of production. Bahhage's ideas contributed to the

dehumanisation of labour hut were also the source of major discoveries.
The mathematician's history was closely linked to that of the industrial
revolution, cradled in England, the 'workshop of the world'. This article
recalls the effervescence of that period.
272
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

commodities. Scientists rarely recognise

4 BABBAGE'S in these commodities the labour on
which they depend. They place their
trust in machines, texts and techniques
CALCULATING
whose fragile and contingent construct
ion they do not, need not and (some
ENGINES AND times) must not investigate. The
production of Knowledge in the scientific
workplace depends on a fetishism
THE FACTORY through which the products of others'
labours are treated as nature's living
representatives. Fleck's Denkkollektive,
SYSTEM Kuhn's paradigmatic exemplars,
Lakatos's protective belt and Callon's
réseaux des porte-parole all remind us
that the experimental life depends on the
self-evident reliability of others' prod
ucts.2 A good way of mapping the work
place is to chart the places where
production processes of various com
modities are recognised or where they
matter. In a nineteenth-century astro
nomical observatory, for example, the
Simon SCHAFFER
human computers knew little of the
processes through which transit instr
uments were made, while spectroscopists
or meteorologists worked in oblivion of
'I wish that my friends in Paris the labour involved in making and veri
should be acquainted with the Cal fying the hundreds of volumes of stellar
culating Engine and my mode of rep transit times and positions, logarithms
resenting the consecutive actions of and trigonometric functions which
all machines which, having been stocked their libraries. At the Royal
practically employed in the work Observatory in Greenwich, 'for one per
shop, is useful to the arts but which son actively engaged at a telescope, the
is more interesting to the philoso visitor would see a dozen writing or com
pher as being one among those sys puting at a desk'. These observatories
tems of signs by which man aids his were publicly compared by their spokes
reasoning power' (Charles Babbage, men to income tax offices, their ledgers
1833)1 stuffed with figures and the principle of
division of clerical labour rigidly
Introduction: the invisible enforced.3

industry of astronomical
Any discussion of the invisible presence
tables of industry in the scientific workplace
The world of the scientific workplace must raise these problems of commodity
presents itself as a vast array of production. I chose Victorian science.
273
Simon SCHAFFER

especially astronomy, because it institu omists of the process of commerce and

tionalised these ways of dealing with comm manufacture. The historian William Ash-
odities. Marx was not the only worth points out that the founders of the
journalist in Victorian London who recog London Astronomical Society (1820),
nised the double process through which including Charles Babbage, Francis
labour power was reified and the prod Baily and Henry Colebrooke, were active
ucts of labour fetishised. Thus in 1843 in banking, insurance and fiscal reform.
George Dodd, author of a series of They computed actuarial tables,
best-selling surveys of the London facto launched new investment schemes and
ries, explained to his metropolitan read developed a comprehansive theory of the
ersthat 'the simple fact that he who has factory system. Their values were those
money can command every variety of of finance capital.6 Traditionally,
exchangeable produce seems to act as a astronomers had been represented as
veil which hides the producer from the isolated observers in direct contact with
consumer ... as in the case of other agenc an unmediated sky. In the nineteenth
ies, the principals have but a vague century, their private practice and their
knowledge of the source whence the sup public repute was increasingly related to
ply is obtained'. The efficiency of the net an industrial system of astronomical
work of consumption and production work. The watchtower became the fac
simultaneously obscured its real worki tory. Observatory managers spent as
ng.4 Successive nineteenth-century exhi much time watching their subordinates
bitions of 'the works and industry of all as watching the stars. The doyen of Vic
nations' were what Walter Benjamin torian astronomers, John Herschel,
called 'sites of pilgrimages to the com explained that 'in astronomy, the super
modity fetish'. The Crystal Palace was a ior departments of theory are comp
literally transparent display of these com letely disjoined from the routine of
modities - only the production processes practical observation'. The aim of the
were invisible and the prices of the goods astronomer, and by implication any sci
unmarked. Its 300,000 panes of glass entist, was 'to make himself as far as
were made by the Birmingham glaziers possible, independent of the imperfec
Chance Brothers. When the energetic tions incident to every work the [instr
economic journalist Harriet Martineau umentmaker] can place in his hands'.
visited their glassworks the year after the Independence from artisans and domi
show she was warned against revealing nance over observers became the aims of
too much of their exploitative labour rela the observatory and laboratory mana
tions to her keen readers.5 gers of Victorian Britain. Observatory
managers could become entirely inde
This interesting process of concealment, pendent by watching others closely and
display and commodification was obvi mechanising what they did.7
ous in the work of Victorian astronomy.
In the first half of the nineteenth cen George Airy, the stern head of the Royal
tury, division of astronomical labour, Observatory, announced that astronomi
reification of its capacities and fetishisa- cal observation should be treated like a
tion of its products were all actively engi branch of the mining industry: 'an
neered. Astronomers of the period were observation is a lump of ore, requiring
remarkably self-conscious political for its production, when the proper
274
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

machinery is provided, nothing more 'observation' now became the result of

than the commonest labour, and without teamwork linking observatory workers
value until it has been smelted'. Data and large numbers of collaborators.9
were fetishised, and the labour of Astronomers' references to 'imperfect
observers and calculators correspondi and variable machines' drew attention to
ngly reified, in the mechanised system those elements of their new networks
of the observatory. In 1832 Airy upon which they could not yet rely.
explained that 'the work of a mere Unreliable elements could not function
observer is the most completely as commodities, because their public
horse-in-a-mill work that can be con status could not be guaranteed and the
ceived. The beau idéal of an observer of details of their production became all too
the highest class is a compound of a obvious. In the case of observers, mecha
watchmaker and a banker's clerk'.8 nisation and subordination turned
Technical developments such as the imperfect variation into calculable pre
construction of the 'personal equation', dictability. But an even more serious
variable but measurable reaction-times problem existed in the persons of the
for different observers, demanded the astronomical 'computers' and in their
regimentation of each observatory tables. There is perhaps no better examp
worker. Artificial stars moving at a leof the invisibility of industry in the
known rate across the telescope's filar scientific workplace than the presence of
micrometer were used to calibrate each mathematical tables. Here trust must be
observer's performance at the eyepiece. absolute and the labour required to veri
Galvanic and mechanical stopwatches fyor challenge a tabulated number cor
were used to effect the calibrations. Cont respondingly immense. Early nineteenth
rol over the act of observation was dis century astronomers faced a crisis with
placed from each individual observer to respect to their own computers, because
the collective regime of managers, they could not be trusted and their
clock-makers and electricians. labour could obviously not be reified.
Publicly-funded European observatory The rest of this paper is devoted to one
managers such as Airy, Quetelet (Bruss enterprise which dealt with this crisis:
els), Struve (Pulkovo) and Arago (Paris) Charles Babbage's attempts from 1821
routinely performed calibration trials on until the mid- 1850s to build calculating
their employees. Arago wrote of his machines which would produce reliable
reliance on clock-makers' skill and on mathematical tables.10
the division of the labour of observation
to which it led. Machines carried the The course of this enterprise illuminates
several aspects of the relationship
burden of trust: *when one wishes in
future to become independent of per between industrial supply and scientific
work:
sonal errors, it will be necessary, so to
speak, to leave to the stopwatch the bur (a) Products such as astronomical tables
den of evaluating the second and frac could not become commodities in sc
tion of a second corresponding to the ience unless they were reliable and free of
passages of stars', declared Arago. An error. Producing reliable tables by
American contemporary classed an human or mechanical computation was
observer as 'but an imperfect and vari very much like disciplining the indust
able machine'. Any meridian transit rialworkforce.
275
Simon SCHAFFER

(b) This similarity became explicit when economy of manufactories', George Dodd
Babbage designed calculating machines pointed out that 'it must be obvious that
to produce mathematical tables, where some hundreds of men are
because his machines were organised employed, some working by the day, and
like factories of numbers. He drew others by piece-work, and where scores
analogies between the factory system, of different materials are used; the com
the working of the calculating engines, mercial accounts of a factory must
and the organisation of science. require extreme care and a well-orga
(c) The calculating machines were never nized system; to prevent the most inex
tricable confusion'. The aim of the new
used to make astronomical tables
observatory managers was to adopt just
because they never became commoditi
es. Conflicts with the existing workf such a system in the administration of
their underlings and the production of
orce, with the observatory managers
their clerical accounts." These new
and with exhibition organisers all vit
observatories formed an integral part of
iated the image of the machines as rel
an expanding fiscal- military state and
iable substitutes for human computers.
an increasingly regulated industrial sys
When labour processes remain visible, it
tem. Airy boasted that in his observatory
is hard to secure the status of industrial
'a mass of observations was accumulati
products.
ng which, though confined in its object,
(d) The calculating machines did acquire surpassed in regularity and accuracy,
exemplary status in Victorian science as and perhaps in general value, any other
tokens of nature's true properties. The observations made at that time'. Thus
theatrical display of the calculating 'the Royal Observatory is quietly con
machines helped convince Darwin that it tributing to the punctuality of business
was possible to explain the origin of through a large portion of this busy
species by natural mechanisms, and the country'.12
presence of such engines in his college's
museum helped Maxwell to develop a The Utopia of tabulation embodied sev
model which represented electr eral salient features of Victorian culture.
omagnetic ether as countless rows of gear It was claimed that reliable computation
wheels. Manufacture plays ideological was a matter of moral rectitude. Airy
and practical roles in the formation of fired operatives who were 'unpunctual in
science's stories about nature. business and so unmanageable', prefer
The immediate premiss of this pr ringthe stalwart graduates of the Camb
ogramme is the role of benchtop mathe ridge Mathematics Tripos on whose
matical handbooks. Numerical probity he could rely. Babbage was just
tabulation available at the scientist's fi such a graduate. In the summer of 1814
ngertips was a precondition of the success he tried briefly to join the Greenwich
of nineteenth-century physical science. staff as a computer until Herschel di
Tables of logarithmic and trigonometric ssuaded him from the thankless task.13
functions, of meridian times and of This moral rectitude was most obviously
lunar positions, played a role in the worked out in campaigns for universal
observatory equivalent to that of the standards in which Babbage, Airy and
Barrême in the counting house. Thus in Herschel all took part. Metrological
his exposé of what he called the 'private tabulation fetishised the labour of
276
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

computational staff. Victorian experts tific traveller roaming over the universe'
reckoned that the 'general value' of equipped with nothing but experimental
imperial standards hinged on the labour cunning and a completely reliable book
expended in their production, and yet of tables. 'For myself, Thomson told his
that this labour had to be invisible when colleagues in the Society of Civil Engi
these standards were established and neers, 'what seems the shortest and
deployed. They all worked hard to make surest way to reach the philosophy of
the work involved in making standards measurement is to cut off all connection
vanish. Thus, while Herschel described with the Earth and think what we must
the 'extraordinary pains taken in the then do to make measurements which
construction' of the imperial yard by a shall be definitely comparable with those
series of controversial commissions and which we now actually do make in our
state-funded industrial projects between terrestrial workshops and laboratories.
1824 and 1855, he insisted that 'our Suppose then the traveller to have lost
yard is a purely individual material his watch and his measuring rod, but to
object from which all reference to a nat have kept his scientific books'. Thomson
ural origin is studiously excluded as imagined a scientific traveller so
much as if it had dropped from the equipped recapturing the units of
clouds'. The length standard became a length, time and electrical resistance by
national fetish, its copies bricked up in calibrating improvised trials against the
the walls of the Board of Trade, the authoritative numbers his 'scientific
Houses of Parliament and the Royal books' contained. Through the extension
Observatory.14 In the 1830s, Babbage of these techniques any lone Victorian
tried to make a paper collection of such could apparently rebuild his culture if
standards, an all-embracing Table of the only he could rely on the values of his
tables.16
Constants of Nature and Art. The phrase
'constant of nature' was a neologism
Babbage helped coin. He urged the labo This was a Victorian Utopia - it hap
rious preparation of an encylopaedia pened nowhere. At the start of the nine
which would contain 'all those facts teenth century, many scientists' libraries
which can be expressed by numbers in would hold at least 125 volumes of
various sciences and arts'. The Table tables. They might contain thousands of
would 'call into action a permanent errors, due to computation, copying, ver
cause of advancement towards truth, ifying and printing. Dionysius Lardner,
continually leading to the more accurate the journalist who acted as Babbage's
determination of established facts and publicity agent, estimated in 1834 that a
measurement of new ones'.15 The apothe random selection of 40 tabulations con
osis of this vision was reached later in tained 3,700 acknowledged errors and
the century, when the pre-eminent Glas innumerable others. The crucially signif
gow physicist and entrepreneur Sir icant Nautical Almanac contained at
William Thomson hammered home the least one thousand errors, while the
message that perfect numerical tabula multiplication tables its computers used
tion would guarantee the independence sometimes erred at least 40 times per
of exact science from any locale. In a page. Such handbooks were rarely com
remarkable exercise in science fiction, puted from scratch and typically relied
Thomson sketched the career of a on collation of previous data; thus, in
277
Simon SCHAFFER

1825 it was reported that in twenty contained further errors. In the 1860s
apparently independent tables at least Babbage could still report that such
six common errors could be found. Such pre-eminent tables as the data on lunar
errors were infections in the body of sci motion used by Airy and the French
ence. John Herschel compared them to analysts Pontécoulant and Delaunay
'sunken rocks', where errant navigators were getting even worse, their errata
would quite literally come to grief. Bab- tables doubling in length over a period of
bage once estimated that at least £3 mil five years. These were moral, economic
lion had been lost to the state through and practical issues which threatened
errors in annuity tables.17 the very basis of the Victorian regime of
certain calculation and fetishistic preci
Babbage, a banker's son and heir, a sion. The great importance of having
Cambridge mathematician and obses accurate tables is admitted by all who
sive analyst, owned more than 300 understand their uses; but the multi
books of tables. Among his treasures tude of errors really occurring is comp
were some pages of G. F. Prony's cel aratively little known', Babbage
ebrated decimal tables of the 1790s, com announced. 'It is, however, fair that the
missioned by the French state for eminent men who presided over the
geodesy and the establishment of the preparation of these works for the press,
metric system. These tables were never observe that the real fault lay not in
published but remained emblematic for them but in the nature of things'. By dis
British proponents of mechanised calcu playing the error of tabulation and trying
lation, who often retold the story of to change the nature of things, Babbage
Prony's application of Smith's division of simultaneously called into question and
labour to the work of computation and made visible the industry on which tab
the success of his subordinate compute ular authority rested. This was why his
rs who lacked all knowledge of arith campaign for the production of tables
metic apart from the rules of addition through industrial engineering remained
and subtraction. When Babbage visited at the very centre of Victorian accounts
Paris in 1819 he met the printer of the of science and the factory system.19
tables, Didot, and was given a copy of
the section of the sine tables which had The visible industry of the
been set. Babbage left this invaluable
calculating engines
compilation to his son in his will.18
Other, harsher, legacies dominated Bab- In what follows, I explore the co-product
bage's perception of the tables crisis. In ion of ideologically laden accounts of
1826-7 he made his own tables by colla intelligence and of politically charged
tion of sets of independent tabulations, systems of machinery. To make
finding 32 errors in his manuscript and machines look intelligent it was neces
8 more after typesetting. This was an sarythat the sources of their power, the
astonishing accomplishment. He left the labour force which surrounded and ran
state a copy of his own work to check the them, be rendered invisible. This is why
tables used at Greenwich, which turned Siegfried Giedion's brilliant study of
out to have 19 errors. When these cor automation is subtitled 'A contribution
rections were then printed in the Nauti to anonymous history'. Like him, I am
calAlmanac, the errata table itself concerned with the mundane places of
278
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

intelligence, in order to confront the Vic But in order to make the products of this
torian mathematical Utopia with the industry into secure commodities he had
Victorian geography of industrial, com to make the labour which produced
mercial and philosophical London. Lon them invisible to the consumers. The
don in the 1820s and 1830s was a users of tables were told that they had
fractured world. The map of London at been produced by machines alone and
that time is significant because of the were thus autonomous from errant
interesting relationship between visibil human labour. Contemporaries were
ity and mechanisation. South of the keenly aware of this double process of
river, in Lambeth, were the workshops of the surveillance of industry and the reifi-
the machinists whose labours drove the cation of its labour. In his address to the
production of automatic tools and accu Astronomical Society in early 1824, its
rate design. In the fashionable milieu of president, the financier and mathematic
the West End, genteel Londoners could ian Henry Colebrooke, eulogised Bab
see the triumphs of these new machine bage's planned machine. 'In other cases,
systems in public lectures and carefully mechanical devices have substituted
orchestrated museums. Here, too, were machines for simpler tools or for bodily
the wardens of scientific reason, the labour. ... But the invention to which I
Astronomical Society, the Royal Society, am adverting ... substitutes mechanical
the Royal Institution. Northwards again, performance for an intellectual process'.
in the fashionable houses of Marylebone, In other words, 'Mr Babbage's invention
lived men such as Charles Babbage and puts an engine in place of the computer',
Charles Darwin, ambitious reformers the human on whose virtues tables had
who sought to rethink human nature in previously relied.21 Babbage, far from
the name of a reconstructed scientific inventing computers, tried to abolish
and social order. And in the north-east them. He reckoned he could police the
were the huge working-class districts, London machine-tool workshops well
areas where Babbage sought to run for enough to make tables independent of
parliamentary office and where his these workshops' vagaries.
socialist critics debated with him on the
hustings about the effects of industriali Babbage's designs for calculating
sation. This is the geography of Bab- engines dominated his career from the
bage's genius, the world where his moment he reached London as a wealthy
systematic vision was forged.20 and ambitious analyst in the 1810s. His
Difference Engine was based on the
In Babbage's world, the automisation of mathematical principle that the success
the factory system went hand in hand ive differences of values of polynomials
with the idea that its mechanical compo were ultimately constants, so tables of
nentspossessed intelligence. In the pro these values could be computed by addi
ject to mechanise the production of tion and subtraction of such predeter
tables, Babbage subjected the industrial mined constants. For astronomical
basis of his own enterprise to unprece work, the important functions were tran-
dentedscrutiny. He tried to make indust scendentals which could be approxi
ry,especially the machine-tool trades, mated in a given interval by some
uniquely visible to its managers so as to polynomial function. The values of this
guarantee a reliable quality of output. polynomial would be computed at
279
Simon SCHAFFER

selected points within this interval and aspects of the Engine, its capacity for
checked at those points where the origi memory and for anticipation, were to be
nalfunction's values were independently profound resources for Babbage's meta
known. Accuracy would be increased by physics and his political economy. 'Noth
developing values for a higher order of ingbut teaching the Engine to foresee
differences and by lessening the interpo and then to act upon that foresight
lationinterval. So the original Difference could ever lead me to the object I
Engine of the 1820s was to be made of a desired'.22 The science of operations, that
series of axes each carrying sets of inde is to say, an algebra of machine analysis,
pendent toothed wheels, parallel was thus proposed as an intellectual dis
columns of which would represent cipline and as material for producing
columns of numbers. Geared operations precise values.
could transform the numbers stored in
each column and a relay connected to This new science was supposed to help
the array to print its output on metal make the industry of machine product
blocks. The device was launched in Lon ion transparent. Initially designed to
don in the summer of 1822 and after 'see at a glance what every moving piece
many vicissitudes, including its nation in the machinery was doing at each
alisation in early 1830, it collapsed instant of time', this panoptic notation
amidst recriminations between Babbage was proffered as a technology of univers
and his master-engineer Joseph al management. Babbage stressed the
Clement in the summer of 1834. Then in advantages of machine semiotics
the mid- 1830s Babbage began negotiat because 'of all our sense, that of sight
ing a new contract with Clement's fo conveys intelligence most rapidly to the
rmer craftsman, C. G. Jarvis, to plan an mind'. Lardner reported that the work
Analytical Engine. This new machine ing of the human body and of the factory
was an unprecedented technical system. system could both be represented and
It was designed to carry in its memory managed this way. The analogy of
one thousand numbers each of fifty digi machine, body and workshop was devel
ts. The store consisted of sets of parallel oped at once: 'not only the mechanical
figure wheels, structured like those in connection of the solid members of the
the store of the Difference Engine; the bodies of men' but also 'in the form of a
input-output device was based on sets of connected map or plan, the organization
number cards and variable cards, the of an extensive factory, or any great publ
latter of which would control which icinstitution, in which a vast number of
gear-axis would be used; and the control individuals are employed, and their
was transmitted through what Babbage duties regulated (as they generally are or
called 'operation cards'. Sequences of ought to be) by a consistent and
cards carried instructions to the engine, well-digested system'. Under Babbage's
which were decoded in the store, using gaze, factories looked like perfect
the machine's library of logarithmic and engines and calculating machines like
other functions, and then distributed to perfect computers. The workforce might
the operating sections of the mill. Such be a source of trouble - it could make
distribution could itself be modified by tables err or factories fail - but it could
variables set by the existing state of not be seen as a source of value. The
operations in the machine. These crucial panoptic gaze which revealed the reliable
280
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

working of the calculating engines, the quantity of both which is necessary

order of the factory system and the for each process; whereas if the
mechanism of the body, also rendered whole work were executed by one
the customary skills of the workforce workman, that person must possess
and its resistance rather hard to see.23 sufficient skill to perform the most
difficult and sufficient strength to
As historians such as Maxine Berg have execute the most laborious of the
demonstrated, these machines for manu operations into which the art is
facturing numbers were developed divided'.24
alongside the discourse of Ricardian
political economy. The 'philosophy of
manufactures' provided Babbage with As Babbage and his allies amang the
political economists showed, the disag-
an account of what he called the 'domest
gregation of the production process into
ic economy of the factory' and also with
its simplest components allowed a series
an analysis of the skilled labour embodi
of economies and practices of surveil
ed in machinery. Babbage's publica
lance. Mechanised production required
tionson the economy of the factory
strict discipline. The same was true of
culminated in his great survey of 1832,
the calculating machines. Parcelling the
On the Economy of Machinery and Manuf
processes of Lagrangean analysis into
actures, a work based on intelligence
specific components allowed the
gathered throughout the factories of
increase in speed of the machine, the
Britain and soon translated into every
transformation of infinities of space into
major European language. As the Anal
manageable durations of time, the most
ytical Engine was a 'manufactory of fig
economical recompense to each compo
ures', so Babbage had to outline his
nentin terms of consumed power (if
definition of a 'manufactory'. 'A consider
mechanical) or consumed wages (if
able difference exists between the terms
human). The whole history of the inven
making and manufacturing', he
tionhas been a struggle against time',
explained in his economics text. The dif
Babbage wrote in 1837. The replacement
ference lay in the economical regulation
of individual human intelligence by
of the domestic system of the factory.
machine intelligence was as apparent in
This led to Babbage's reinterpretation of
the workshop as in the engines. This
Adam Smith's notion of the division of
task was both politically and economic
labour, and, as he emphasised, the fun
ally necessary. 'One great advantage
damental principle of that division which
which we derive from machinery is the
allowed the sensitive analytical regula
check which it affords against the inat
tion of the process of manufacture. The
tention, idleness or the dishonesty of
'Babbage principle', as it came to be
human agents'. Such failings could pro
known, applied equally to the regulation
duce the erroneous results which vit
of the factory and of the calculating
iated calculation and stopped tables
machines:
being treated as reliable commodities.
That the master manufacturer, by This was why Babbage was always fasc
dividing the work to be executed into inated by the fact that Prony's least intel
different processes, each requiring ligent computers, when subject to the
different degrees of skill or of force, right management, were the most reli
can purchase exactly that precise able. Unreliable agents could also form
281
Simon SCHAFFER

trade union combinations, which, Bab- legislative discipline, just as the calcu
bage held, were always 'injurious' to the lating engines provided both legislative
workforce itself. His aim here was to and executive co-ordination. This politi
contest the influence of 'designing per caland managerial language was not
sons' and show the working classes that merely an elegant reformist metaphor
'the prosperity and success of the master hatched in wealthy London drawing
manufacturer is essential to the welfare rooms. The calculating machines were
of the workman', even though 'this con themselves products of the system of
nexion is in many cases too remote to be automatic manufacture which Babbage
understood by the latter'.25 sought to promote. They were some of
that system's most famous and most vis
Babbage's political strategies during the ible accomplishments.
strife-ridden 1830s outlined a crucial
role for the analytic manager. The The visible industry of the
machinery of the factory and the calcu
factory system
lating engines largely replaced the indi
vidual intelligence of the worker. Only The calculating machines completed for
the superior combination and correlation the polite attention of fashionable soci
of each component guaranteed efficient, etywith the vast array of automata and
economical, planned and therefore intel mechanisms on display in London show
ligent performance. This abstract behavi rooms. In early 1834 two models of the
our,almost as if in obedience to a law, Difference Engine were made by the
was visible only to the overseers, men instrument designer Francis Watkins,
such as Babbage. No doubt his own sta who plied his trade as electrician and
tus as a gentlemanly specialist helped. showman at the Adelaide Gallery, the
He inherited £100,000 from his banker leading London showcase for new engi
father in 1827, while the state spent neering. The Adelaide Gallery also con
more than £17,000 on his machines in tained a Jacquard loom, a
the next decade. The efforts for the programmable machine often mentioned
improvement of its manufactures which when explaining the principle of 'weav
any country can make with the greatest ingnumbers' with Babbage's Analytical
probability of success', he argued in his Engine. 'In each of these valuable reposi
text on machinery, 'must arise from the tories of scientific illustration', London
combined exertions of all those most readers were told in a commentary on
skilled in the theory, as well as in the the Analytical Engine, 'a weaver is con
practice of the arts; each labouring in stantly working at a Jacquard loom and
that department for which his natural is ready to give any information that may
capacity and acquired habits rendered be desired'. This was deeply ironic: the
him most fit'. Such declarations made Jacquard system had almost completely
the new class of managerial analysts the destroyed the traditional weaving trades
supreme economic managers and legis which had previously employed so much
lators of social welfare. In good Bona- of London's workforce. Display mediated
partist style, Babbage thought they the effects of mechanisation on everyday
should be rewarded with new-fangled life life. This was why, when the Difference
peerages and political power.26 The sc Engine had been abandoned, Babbage
ience of calculation became the supreme insisted 'it should be placed where the
282
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

public can see if. It was put on display ration with his brother Jeremy had
in the museum of King's College, Lon already introduced an identical system
don. Next door, at the Admiralty of surveillance in Russian woodworking
Museum in Somerset House, visitors schemes in the early 1780s, a scheme
could view Henry Maudslay's celebrated soon to be known as the panopticon. The
block-making machinery designed for engineering works were laid out by Marc
the Portsmouth naval dockyards. These Brunei and implemented by his close
technical systems were on show as the ally Maudslay. These were the men who
highest achievements of the early Victo introduced Clement to Babbage, and the
rianmachine-tool industry.27 men who made this system of inspect
ion,regulation and line-production a
Two salient features of these displays visible exemplar of rational managem
ent.28
mattered for Babbage's own project.
First, the systématisation of machine-
Samuel Bentham and his colleagues
tool production was highly charged polit made Portsmouth dockyard a site of
ically. Secondly, this process demanded 'incessant work' and then turned it into
the reorganisation of the productive a tourist attraction. The Portsmouth
body and the space in which it per
team argued that public visibility could
formed. The pre-eminent example was be an invaluable aspect of their indust
provided at Portsmouth dockyard, the rialreformation. Bentham 'considered it
very earliest site at which the automatic
highly conducive to the hastening of the
machine-tool system was implemented. introduction of a general System of
Between 1795 and 1807 the entire sys machinery that public opinion should be
tem of production of pulley-blocks for obtained in its favour, and that this was
the Royal Navy was overhauled. Tradi
likely to be more surely effected by a dis
tionally this production had relied on play of well arranged machines'. So from
specialised crafts in woodworking and the 1810s the block machinery became a
milling highly resistant to line manage common resort for interested visitors.
ment and control. In the face of mass The new system of technological repres
protests, military force was used. As his sioncan be taken as exemplary of the
torians Carolyn Cooper and Peter emergence of the wage form and of the
Linebaugh have explained, the new pro
productive labourer. A guidebook to the
duction-line system destroyed and reor dockyard commented that 'on entering
ganised every feature of this pattern. the block mill, the spectator is struck
Pulley-blocks were standardised and with the multiplicity of its movements
marked to prevent what was now called and the rapidity of its operations'.29 The
'theft'. Standardised machinists impersonal pronouns in this account are
replaced specialist craftsmen. Wood was eloquent. To see the automatic world as
replaced by steam-driven all-metal a reliable system of commodity product
machinery and separate artisan tasks ion, it was important not to see the cul
embodied in purpose-built lathes and ture of the workforce.
clamps. The protagonists of this reor
ganisation were also the protagonists of The London machine shows exhibiting
much wider social change. The system the Difference Engine and the
was developed by Samuel Bentham, the Portsmouth lathes were designed to win
inspector of naval works, who in income and teach important lessons to a
283
Simon SCHAFFER

wide range of publics. Babbage's lessons Michel Foucault, with Benthamite

hinged on the proper ownership of strategies for the surveillance of the
machinery and thus, in the jargon of his body in the illuminated spaces of the
favourite science, the source of product panopticon. Babbage's campaigns for
ive value. The rights of the workers to machine intelligence take their place
the whole value of their labour informed alongside these more familiar strategies
much of the radical protest of these key for the reconfiguration of the productive
years. Who should 'own' these body within the factory system.31
machines? Whose labour did they
The factory system was first represented
embody? Reformist journalists were per
under this name in a powerful series of
sistently struck by 'the systematic way
journalistic reports produced in the
in which the people proceeded', while the
'people' themselves protested against the 1830s and 1840s, of which Friedrich
campaigns 'to make us tools' or Engels's Condition of the Working Class
in England (1845) is only the most noto
'machines'. These issues made urgent
rious, though certainly one of the more
the problem of the source and ownership
perceptive. Babbage's work on political
of the skills embodied in machines con
economy and on machine intelligence
fessedly designed to perform mental
work.30 took its place in this genre of works
which were both products of well-publi
cised tours of the workshops and also
Working class interests appealed to tra producers of intelligence about the fac
ditional custom, in which skill was tory system. Maxine Berg emphasises
recognised as a property inherent in the that 'the factory system itself was a term
persons of the workers themselves. Skill which frequently concealed more than it
was reckoned to be scarcely communicab revealed'.32 Babbage's tours were no
le outside carefully controlled milieux exception. His was one of the handbooks
which were designed to remain opaque
with which factory tourists were supp
to the surveillance of managers and lied. Other representative texts
inspectors. Thus attempts by observers included The Philosophy of Manufactures
such as Babbage to gather intelligence in 1835 from the same publisher as Bab
about machines and the workforce were bage's work and written by the Scottish
politically controversial. In contrast to consulting chemist Andrew Ure, and
the traditional model, philosophers of reports on the Lancashire factories pro
machinery promoted an account of ratio duced in the 1840s by the Irish journali
nalvaluation, attempting to render the st William Cooke Taylor. In their
labour process transparent and skills well-marketed texts, the factory guides
fairly easily measurable in the market emphasised that inside the automatic
place of wage labour. These are the early system tourists would see those
nineteenth century English conflicts 'admirable adaptations of human skill
which, following E. P. Thompson, we and intelligence' by which 'we are giving
now typically associate with political to the present age its peculiar and wond
economic campaigns against the Corn erful characteristic, namely the tr
Laws and the customary moral economy iumph of mind over matter'.33
of the grain rioters, where economic
rationality came into conflict with tradi Literary companions were produced as a
tional forms of exchange, or, following skilful mixture of travel diary and tourist
284
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

guide. Readers were repeatedly the status of human labour, and human
instructed on the right mode of deport labour transformed into a form of deli
mentwhen on tour in the manufacturing cate leisure.34
districts. Cooke Taylor was a notable
propagandist for free trade and the manu These careful transformations were
facturing interests of Manchester and hammered home in the tour guides pro
an amateur ethnographer, the author of duced in the 1830s and 1840s. A hand
a treatise on The Natural History of Soci book for visitors to Manchester, the
ety (1840) in which class struggle was 'metropolis of manufactures', produced
explained in terms of mutual ignorance. in 1839, counselled all tourists to read
In his Factories and the Factory System Ure thoroughly and then obtain letters of
of 1844, a work dedicated to the Tory introduction to the mills run by Fair-
premier and reluctant free trader Robert bairn and Nasmyth, the bastions of
Peel, Cooke Taylor noted the contrast mass-production engineering and of the
between hasty visions of the industrial deployment of machine tools on a large
sublime and philosophical meditation on scale. With almost one hundred various
the systematic benefits of the factory. 'It machine firms in the city to be seen,
is not surprising that many false notions walking through Fairbairn's ironworks,
should prevail respecting the influence or travelling on a specially-built train
of machinery; the tourist, visiting a fac through Nasmyth's Bridgewater
tory district for the first time, cannot Foundry, a 'gratifying treat' would give
contemplate without wonder and even the appropriate sense of wonder together
some emotions of involuntary fear the ... with the understanding of regular sys
mighty steam-engine performing its tem. The visitor should take a walk
functions with a monotonous regularity among the mills, and whatever his
not less impressive than the enormous notions may be respecting their smoke
force which it sets in motion. His earliest and steam and dust, he will be comp
impression is that fire and water - elled to indulge in feelings of wonder at
proverbially the best servants and the their stupendous appearance'. But in
worst masters - have here established troubled times such feelings, as Cooke
despotic dominion over man, and that Taylor also stressed, should be immedia
here matter has acquired undisputed tely tempered by the sense of regular
empire over mind'. Such errors, which order. The Bridgewater Foundry, for
Cooke Taylor reckoned had bred unfor example, was established in 1836, where
tunate evangelical efforts to limit and major strikes of Lancashire engineers
control factory conditions, could only be soon erupted in protest against harsh
corrected by 'time and patience, wage rates and the destruction of the
repeated observation, and calm reflec apprentice system. From summer 1838
tion'. The philosophic gaze would see Chartist demonstrations in Manchester
that 'the giant, steam, is not the tyrant demanding the enfranchisement of the
but the slave of the operatives, not their working class commanded more than
rival but their fellow-labourer, employed fifty thousand marchers. In contrast, the
as a drudge to do all the heavy work, ideal tourist would expect to see Nas
leaving to them the lighter and more del myth's 'straight-line system' of through
icate operations'. Under Cooke Taylor's put and the widespread application of
wizardry, steam power was elevated to self- acting machine tools. At Fairbairn's
285
Simon SCHAFFER

works 'in every direction the utmost sys the material world'.36 In their accounts of
tem prevails, and each mechanic this resistance, a characteristic series of
appears to have his peculiar description themes was developed in the literature of
of work assigned with the utmost eco factory tourism. The apparently ove
nomical subdivision of labour'.35 rwhelming power of the works should
rightly be understood as labour disci
This triumph was at once a claim for the pline within a system of division and
machine tool system, and thus the cont co-ordination, producing geometrical
rol of matter by human intelligence, and precision out of mere manual skill in
for labour discipline, and thus the cont despite of proletarian resistance.
rol of the workforce by its masters. Ure
stressed the relation between 'the auto In this context, the faculties of reliability
matic plan' and 'the equalization of and mechanical production of tabulated
labour'. The grand object therefore of data with which Babbage sought to
the modern manufacturer is, through endow his engines and their output also
the union of capital and science, to characterised his self-presentation as
reduce the task of his work-people to the the unique author of the calculating
exercise of vigilance and dexterity'. It machines and of the factory survey.
was precisely for this reason that in his They embodied his control over the
tours Ure judged the factory as a form of engine and disembodied the skills, and
laboratory, a potentially Utopian site camouflaged the workforce, on which it
devoid of strife and replete with scientific depended. They made the engine into a
truth. Here the industrialist simply fetish. Babbage explained his view of the
became a scientist. The science of the property of skill involved in the calculat
factory' was at once a means of disciplin ing engines in an appeal to the premier,
ing labour and an object-lesson in ther the Duke of Wellington, about their
mal physics, 'better studied in a week's future in late 1834. 'My right to dispose,
residence in Lancashire than in a ses as I will, of such inventions cannot be
sion of any university in Europe'. The contested; it is more sacred in its nature
Manchester guidebook explained that than any hereditary or acquired prope
the self-acting principle applied to slide rty, for they are the absolute creations
control in machine lathes 'is that which of my own mind'.37 This remarkable dec
enables a child or the machine itself to laration followed a decade of strife with
operate on masses of metal and to cut Clement, the brilliant (but here charact
shavings off iron as if it was deprived of eristically unnamed) engineer on whose
all hardness and so mathematically cor work so much of the engine's develop
rect that even Euclid himself might be mentdepended. When the project was
the workman!' The tour guides agreed inaugurated Babbage had to work out
that accuracy was both demanded by, whether the design was in 'such a form
and a corrective to, labour resistance. that its execution [might be] within the
The frequent and insufferable annoy reach of a skilful workman'. In turn, this
ances which engineers have experienced prompted his immediate examination 'in
from trades unions' produced 'those detail of machinery of every kind'. Fights
admirable contrivances which are were endemic about Babbage's claims
enabling mechanicians to perform such that the workforce should submit to,
wonders in overcoming the resistance of and only needed slavishly to follow, his
286
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

detailed design for the calculating chuck. Their network of machine-tool

engines and that any results of this firms dominated the training and regula
labour would belong to himself.38 tion of precision engineering. Maudslay
set up his own London works in Lam
Babbage's specifications placed beth in 1797, and employees there fo
unprecedented demands on the capacit llowed suit: Richard Roberts in 1814 in
ies of the machine tool workshops and Manchester, James Nasmyth, hired by
soon turned those workshops into revo Maudslay in 1829 before setting up in
lutionary sites of innovation and train Manchester in 1836, and Joseph Whit-
ing.For the first engine mill he required worth, who began working for Maudslay
at least six coaxial gear wheels turned to in early 1825 and established his own
an extraordinary exactitude, while the firm in Manchester in 1833. The careers
printing system needed a further set of of all these men were charted and
interlocking gears engraved with letters moralised in the mid-century by Samuel
and figures. A report drafted in 1829 for Smiles, the indefatigable chronicler of
the Royal Society by Babbage's closest self-improvement and engineering
achievement.40
allies, including Herschel, conceded that
'in all those parts of the machine where
the nicest precision is required the Clement was one of Smiles's heroes and
wheelwork only brings them by a first a veteran of this system too. The son of a
approximation (though a very nice one) handloom weaver, the trade which suf
to their destined places, and they are fered most from rapid mechanisation,
then settled into accurate adjustment by Clement worked as a turner in Glasgow
peculiar contrivances which admit of no before training with Bramah and Mauds
shake or latitude of any kind'.39 The layin the 1810s. In 1817 he set up
troublesome terms in these bland shop in Southwark, near Maudslay and
remarks by the gentlemen of science the centre of the London engineering
were the references to nice precision, trade, where he soon introduced a new
accurate adjustment and shake or lat form of slide rest to render lathe-work
itude. What might seem to a scientist to regular and manageable. This remained
be a matter of irrational judgement, were essentially domestic labour. When Bab-
key aspects of the customary culture of bage commissioned him in 1823 on the
the industrialising workshop. The Manc recommendation of the eminent engi
hester engineer William Fairbairn remi neer Marc Brunei, Clement had just one
nisced that 'the millwright of former lathe set up in his own kitchen. As cash
days was to a great extent the sole repre began to flow for the calculating engine
sentative of mechanical art'. But in very project, Clement's firm soon expanded to
rapid succession, in fields such as clock a scale of workforce, and of individual
making, ornamental turning and, above machine tools, quite new in the trade.
all, the development of steam pistons Up to one-third of his business
and screw gears, masters such as depended on the Difference Engine pro
Joseph Bramah and his chief workman ject. Whitworth was hired to work for
Maudslay began to design self-moving Clement on the design. The Manchester
cutting lathes to allow the production of City News observed that 'Mr Clement
precise planes, reliable screws and contrived and manufactured numerous
slide-rests to control the work in the tools for executing the several parts of
287
Simon SCHAFFER

this [calculating] machine, educating, at machinists and draughtsmen was vital

the same time, special workers to to the project. When Babbage set out on
manipulate and guide them. ... Mr Whit- a European tour in 1828 he left Clement
worth was possessed of a special apti what he reckoned were 'sufficient draw
tude for that minute accuracy of detail in ingsto enable his agents to proceed with
mechanical work which necessarily the construction of the Difference
must bave been a marked characteristic Engine during his absence'. Such writ
of the skilled workmen engaged on Bab- ten instructions soon proved hopelessly
bage's machine'.41 inadequate. Two years later, on his
return, Babbage demanded that the
These workshops were designed to train engine construction site be moved from
apprentices in the production of regular Clement's works across the river to Bab
and consistently accurate work through bage's own house in Dorset Street.
the use of highly standardised and auto Brunei helpfully suggested a compro
matic tools. A Lancashire engineer work mise site at the British Museum. When
ingin the 1840s recalled that 'men in the government funded a new workshop
large shops are not troubled with a vari next door to Dorset Street, Clement
ety of work, but had one class of work demanded a large financial recompense
and special tools. The men soon became for the costs of splitting his workforce
expert and turned out a large quantity of between two places. The financiers
work with the requisite exactness with refused and Clement sacked most of his
out a little of the thought required of men. Jarvis, Clement's ex-draughtsman
those who work in small shops where and future co-designer of the Analytical
fresh work continually turns up but Engine, explained to Babbage why it was
always the same old tools'. However, as important that work proceed 'under your
the comments of Whitworth reveal, the immediate inspection': 'you might be at
shops were also highly private sites of once appealed to whenever it was found
specialist aptitude routinely judged to be very difficult to produce nearly [the
the personal quality of some privileged desired] effect - which is a very common
individual. Nasmyth remembered how case in machinery'. The lesson is a famil
his drawings of high pressure steam iarone. The production and reproduct
engines were decisive in obtaining ion of skills and material technology
employment at Maudslay's shop: requires intense and immediate interac
'Mechanical drawing is the alphabet of tion in spaces specifically designed for
the engineer. Without this the workman the purpose. Such designs violated the
is merely a hand; with it, he indicates conventions by which the machinists
the possession of a head'. Such local plied their trade. In Maudslay's works, a
entanglements of standardised product large locked door protected 'his beautiful
ion and individualised skill were not private workshop' where 'many trea
easily unravelled by Babbage's campaign sured relics of the first embodiments of
for the mechanisation and quantification his constructive genius' were hung.
of the value of mental and manual They were kept as relics of his progress
labour.42 Two critical problems haunted towards mechanical perfection'. Such
the work on the calculating engines. shrines were, significantly, protected
First, the place of skill and the social and from the intrusions of customers and
cognitive distance between designers, patrons alike. Clement, for example,
288
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

always refused to make out bills for his might look like costly disorder. He told
work and tools 'because it not the cus Wellington in the summer of 1834 that
tom of engineers to do so'.43 the shift from the Difference to the Anal
A second decisive problem for the engine ytical design was part of this order. The
project was therefore the issue of owner fact of a new superseding an old
machine in a very few years is one of
shipand public knowledge. The costs of
constant occurrence in our manufactor
the work were traditionally in the hands
ies ... half finished machines have been
of the engineer, while his tools, in this
thrown aside as useless before their
case the lathes, planes and vices, were
always his own property. Thus the ques completion'. This scarcely consoled the
tion of whether the Difference Engine administration nor did it easily engage
with the culture of the machine shops,
was itself a tool became relevant. From
where personal skill and thus individual
1829 Babbage and Clement were in dis
pute about property and prices. Clement property was at stake in every 'improved'
design and workshop layout. Once the
nominated Maudslay and Babbage nomi
engine had been nationalised and
nated Bryan Donkin, designer of
machinery for national weights and shifted to Babbage's own workshop, it
measures, to arbitrate in the dispute. was proposed that Jarvis work there but
remain under Clement's management.
Clement at once appealed to the cus
Clement refused the deal because 'my
toms of his craft: all the tools, especially
the new self-acting lathes, belonged plan may be followed without my being
in any way a gainer', and Jarvis refused
exclusively to him and he insisted on his
because he would be blamed for any fai
right to make more calculating engines
without Babbage's permission. Once lure 'as being necessarily most familiar
with the details, whereas all the praise
again, Jarvis explained the point to the
which perfection would secure would
infuriated mathematician:
attach to Mr Clement who would come
'It should be borne in mind that the over now and then and sanction my
inventor of a machine and the maker plans only when he could not substitute
of it have two distinct ends to obtain. any of his own'. The machinist refused to
The object of the first is to make the become 'party to my own degradation'.
machine as complete as possible. Babbage and his Royal Society allies
The object of the second - and we might judge this as rational manage
have no right to expect he will be ment, while the engineers often saw it as
influenced by any other feeling - is a challenge to their rights and skills".45
to gain as much as possible by maki
ng the machine, and it is in his But while Babbage's early projects col
interest to make it as complicated as
possible'.44 lapsed under the force of these chal
lenges, his campaign for automatic
Babbage's characteristic solution was to calculation successfully captured the
propose the nationalisation of the interests of the engineering managers
engine, the tools and the designs. He and their new system. The intelligence
was pursuing what he reckoned was the gathered for his work on manufacture
practical logic of much of the machine- offered two important lessons about
tool industry. Babbage was forced to wage rates and skill patterns. The engi
explain how rationally managed design neers were prepared to value the calcu-
289
Simon SCHAFFER

lating engine project by raising the chance of the best work and I am proud
wages of workmen who had been to say that I am getting more wages than
involved in the scheme. They were also any other workman in the Factory'.
committed to the design of increasingly Wright offered himself to Babbage as a
automated systems which would break possible master engineer. 'I should be
down craft divisions and allow the glad to convince you that I am able to
employment of increasingly cheap hands complete it by making either a model ...
and increasingly subordinate labour or by making any difficult part of the
processes. In a telling annotation to his Machine either calculating or printing'.
correspondence with Wellington, Bab- During the later 1830s Wright was trav
bage remarked that 'I have been elling extensively throughout the factory
informed by men who are now scattered system. In 1835, for example, he walked
about in our manufacturing districts, from London to Yorkshire, where he sur
that they all get higher wages than their veyed the factories and the mines, then
fellow workmen in consequence of hav on to Scotland, Ulster and Lancashire.
ing worked at that machine'. Babbage's Though he complained that 'the habits
source was Richard Wright, whom he and conversation of the Factory are
first employed as a valet on his Euro indeed disgusting to a thinking mind', by
pean tour in 1828. Five years later, the end of the decade he had set up his
Wright set up as an engineer in Lambeth own works in Manchester, where 'I
Road, very near Maudslay. Armed with intend to employ nothing but the best
Babbage's instructions, the young man workmen and material', and from the
set out on a tour of the northern work early 1840s was in active consultation
shops as part of the campaign to gather on the Analytical project. By making
intelligence for Babbage's book. In the himself a 'thinking mind', Wright became
summer of 1834 Wright went to Manc Babbage's ideal, a Smilesian paragon
hester to work for Whitworth, who had who reckoned that rational management
opened his mill there a year earlier after and the careful surveillance of the divi
leaving the Difference Engine project. sion of labour provided the key to suc
They are building as large a Factory as cess in making the calculating engines.
any in Manchester', Wright told Bab- In a lengthy epistle Wright explained to
bage. The struggle between craft custom Babbage how the new system should
and innovative production-line tech work and how management should rule
niques was striking. According to an the skills of the workforce:
American visitor to the Whitworth fac
tory, because of subordination of the The man you select for the work
workforce and the increasing use of shop ought to be a good general
self-operating machines 'no-one in his workman both at Vice and Lathe for
works dared to think'. So Wright set out such a man can see by the way a
to make himself fit for the Babbage man begins a job whether he will fin
engine scheme. He went to classes at the ish it in a workmanlike manner or
local Mechanics' Institute and drawing not. Perhaps you are not quite aware
academy. He reported to Babbage that that at Mr Clement's and most other
'there is much talk about the [calculat Factories the work is divided into the
ing] Machine here, so much so that a branches Vice and Lathe, and in
man who has worked at it has a greater most cases the man who works at
290
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

the one is nearly ignorant of the were so often fetishised. Maudslay's

other ... He ought above all to have benchtop scale was 'humourously called
studied the dispositions of workmen ... The Lord Chancellor', while Nasmyth
so as to keep the workshop free from and his colleagues boasted of 'the prog
contention and disorder and the eny of legitimate descendants' which
causes of the repeated failures of so they had produced.47
much new Machinery for I am sure
there are more failures through In London, Lancashire, Clydeside and
waste of labour and bad manage elsewhere, the systems these men
ment than there are through bad helped forge were the sites of a new
schemes or any other cause".46 managerial and technical network,
dependent as much on strenuous regu
Wright's was the anonymous voice lation of the labour process as on the
recorded in the pages of Babbage's Econ development of new automatic machine
omy of Machinery and which, through ry. The development of ready-made
this text, helped articulated the con metal textile machinery, for example,
cerns of those employed in the auto was a result of this system. In the
matic system in the machine-tool trades. process, craft customs were subverted
In the philosophy of manufacture much and standardised, and accurate product
was made of the highly personal skills ion secured.48 The managers of the most
embodied in the master-engineers. In advanced workshops eventually became
his travel notes for the engine survey, Babbage's closest allies and sources of
Babbage recorded that 'causes of failure' intelligence and support. In his Economy
should be found by consulting a 'man of of Machinery Babbage made much of the
science on the principle' and 'a practical means through which the lathe would
engineer on mechanical difficulties'. It guarantee 'identity' and 'accuracy', and
was acknowledged, and celebrated, that then accounted accuracy as an economy
manual dexterity remained a central of time, since 'it would be possible for a
attribute of 'the skilled workman*. Bab very skilful workman, with files and pol
bage reckoned that 'the first necessity' ishing substances', to produce a perfect
for his Difference Engine was 'to pre surface. So artisan skill could be trans
serve the life of Mr Clement... it would be muted into its wage equivalent. In 1847,
extremely difficult if not impossible to he contributed a discussion of this the
find any other person of equal talent ory of lathe-work and metal-turning to
both as a craftsman and as a mechanic the definitive textbook produced by
ian'. Engine masters became heroes. Charles Hotzapffel, doyen of specialist
According to Nasmyth 'by a few masterly lathe designers. Holtzapffel himself then
strokes Maudslay could produce plane contributed a long description of Bab
surfaces so true that when their accu bage's own tools on the engine project.
racy was tested by a standard plane sur In the next decade, both Whitworth and
face of absolute truth, they were never Nasmyth offered Babbage support in
found defective'. At the same time, completing the Analytical Engine and
'absolute truth' was increasingly vested testified in public to the benefits of the
in the standardised tool-kit of the calculating engines for their own trade.
machine shops. No doubt this was why Babbage's friend the dissenting mathe
the authoritative scales and tools in use matician Augustus de Morgan brilliantly
291
Simon SCHAFFER

summarised the relation between the display of these devices as commodities

lathe, emblem of automatic skill, and was decisive. Babbage's erstwhile collab
Babbage, master of mechanical analysis, orator Bryan Donkin brought the
in a cartoon showing him at the lathe Scheutz machine to London in 1854,
armed only with a series of logarithmic showed it to the Royal Society, and even
functions. In this image, the support tually persuaded the General Register
staff and the workshops on whose Office to use such an engine to compute
virtues Babbage depended are invisible. its life tables. One version was shown at
Mathematical analysis is now identified the Paris international exhibition in
with the automatic machine and its 1855, a show which Babbage described
master.49 as 'remarkable beyond all former ones
for the number and ingenuity of the
Conclusion: the fabrication machines which performed arithmetical
operations'. Scheutz's machine was
and exhibition of reliable
thence shipped to the Dudley Observat
numbers ory in New York State for astronomical
Despite these images of mastery and tabulation. This engine ended up in a
mechanism, Babbage's engines were Chicago Museum, and a huge version of
never used to make the tables for which it, designed by Barnard Grant, was put
they were designed. In this sense, they on display at the Philadelphia Centenn
provide an object lesson in the difficul ial Exhibition in 1876. Babbage himself
ties of marketing science commercially. was obsessed by the place (and the
Michel Callon warns us that economistic absence) of his own engines at success
analogies for the processes of science, ive London exhibitions. He reckoned
however appealing, 'are really more dan they had been deliberately excluded
gerous than useful, because they end up from the Crystal Palace in 1851. Even
blocking the only question that matters: when shifted from King's College
how does research manage to create in Museum to be put on display at the
one and the same movement both new International Exhibition of 1862, the
products and the demand which is asso Difference Engine was 'placed in a small
ciated with them 9'50 Babbage's project hole in a dark corner where it could, with
helped produce a demand it did not some difficulty, be seen by six people at
meet. Its principal impact on the conf the same time'.51 These exhibitions
licting fields of Victorian scientific man simultaneously turned machines into
agement and precision measurement commodities and provided the sites at
was the production of that demand. In which the disciplinary and industrial
Victorian scientific culture, these division of labour could be mapped and
demands were often produced through reinforced. In his manifesto for the Cryst
public exhibition and then analysed in alPalace, Prince Albert made the point
moral and disciplinary terms. The histo pithily: 'the great principle of the division
rian Michael Lindgren recently showed of labour, which may be called the movi
that Lardner's 1830s publicity for Bab ng power of civilisation, is being
bage's schemes soon prompted the extended to all branches of science and
Swedish engineers Georg and Edvard industry'. In the exhibitions, the com
Scheutz to build a series of difference plex interaction between science as the
engines, completed in the 1850s. Public producer of industrial know-how and
292
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

science as the consumer of industrial were apparent in the career of the calcu
products was displayed, debated and lating machines. The boss of the General
defined.52 Register Office, William Fair, confirmed
that the Difference Engine 'required
Both apologists of the factory system incessant attention. ... The work had to
and eulogists of the exhibitions often be watched with anxiety and its arith
lauded machines, including the calculat metical music had to be elicited by fr
ing engines, because they disciplined the equent tuning and skilful handling'. It
workforce, prevented errors and guarant was by no means obvious to all Victorian
eed reliable production. Proletarian vis scientists that it was desirable to dis
itors to the machine shows equally place such skills. At Greenwich, Airy
frequently complained that their own was never convinced that it was possible
role in manufacture was invisible there. to mechanise the highly moral and
Thus Andrew Ure characteristically mathematically complex functions of his
lapsed into the imagery of Olympus and computers. In 1842 he told the Chancell
of Frankenstein to describe Richard or of the Exchequer Henry Goulburn
Roberts's new spinning mule installed in that 'scarcely a figure of the Nautical
the Manchester mills as 'the Iron Man Almanac could be computed by it.... the
sprung out of the hands of our modern difficult part must be done by human
Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva - a computers'. Fifteen years later, when
creation destined to restore order among Donkin and Scheutz were propagandisi
the industrious classes'. In his story, ng for the difference, engines at the
scientific wisdom taught industry how to (General Register Office, Airy conceded
run its affairs and mechanise its labour that the simple functions required for a
process. But the displacement of handic life table might be mechanised, but
raftby the machine was neither uni wanted Greenwich Observatory kept as a
form nor universal. As Raphael Samuel human preserve. In the Observatory 'no
has demonstrated, mid-Victorian indust advantage would be gained by the use of
rialmechanisation was accompanied by the Machine and (Airy) would prefer the
the preservation, intensification and pen computation of human computers
expansion of skilled manual labour in the way in which it has hitherto been
throughout the economy. The mid-Vic employed'.54 These were controversial
torianengineer was still characteristi views. Some critics reckoned that the
cally a craftsman, an artisan or mathematical discipline which Airy
mechanic rather than an operative or admired so much was little better than
hand'. The invisibility of human labour working a prison treadmill. Far from pre
in the automatic system was a political serving human skill, they complained,
and moral image never justified by fac Airy's Cambridge-trained mathematic
tory life nor by mathematical tabulation. ians were actually reducing it to
As William Lazonick has argued, for mechanical rote. Thus the Edinburgh
example, in the cotton factories over moralist William Hamilton reckoned that
lookers preferred less mechanical meth both Cambridge mathematics and the
ods for winding yarn onto spindles treadmill 'equally educate to a mechanic
because such methods yielded much al continuity of attention, as in each the
greater discipline of the conduct and scholar is disagreeably thrown out on
quality of labour.53 The same conflicts the slightest wandering of thought'. To
293
Simon SCHAFFER

such a hostile observer there seemed lit tors 'went to see the thinking machine
tle to choose between calculating (for such it seems)' and were treated to
engines and Greenwich computers. So if Babbage's miraculous show of appare
Airy claimed that a machine which could ntlysudden breaks in its output. There
only compute using fourth differences was a sublimity in the views thus opened
was inadequate for the analysis his of the ultimate results of intellectual
astronomical tabulations needed, Bab- power', one onlooker reported. A few
bage countered that it was 'really extra streets away, the young naturalist
ordinary that when it was demonstrated Charles Darwin learnt his lesson and set
that all tables are capable of being com out to use Babbage's system as an ana
puted by machinery, and even when a logue for the origin of species by natural
machine existed which computed certain law without divine intervention. Darwin
tables, the Astronomer Royal did not larded his Origin of Species (1859) with
become the most enthusiastic supporter arguments he found in Babbage's
of an instrument which could render description of this phenomenon. He
such invaluable service to his own sci found in the calculating engine the mes
ence'. The calculating engines did not sage that the world could be represented
become commodities in the Royal Observ as a mechanical array visible as a sys
atory.55 tem from the point of view of the philoso
pherand in no need of immediate
For some pre-eminent Victorian scient miracles to maintain its regular order.56
ists, however, these machines func
tioned as practical symbols of nature's Another example of the universalisation
capacities. The calculating engines could of such engines is found in the origin of
become powerful emblems of the way the the electromagnetic theory of light.
universe really worked. Here are two Between 1843 and 1862, as we have
examples. Throughout the 1830s Bab- seen, Babbage's Difference Engine stood
bage regaled his house-guests with a in the Museum of King's College, Lon
portentous party trick. He could set the don. During the 1850s the College's pro
Difference Engine to print the series of fessor of manufacturing art and
integers for an apparently endless machinery, the Cambridge mathematic
period. Any observer of the machine's ian Thomas Goodeve, lectured on the
output would assume that this series machines in his Museum, demonstrated
would continue indefinitely. But the ini their properties and produced an influ
tial setting of the machine could be ential textbook, Elements of mechanism
adjusted so that at a certain point the (1860). Gear wheels and pulley blocks,
machine would then advance in steps of trains and lathes all provided matter for
ten thousand. An indefinite number of his clasies.57 Soon after Goodeve left the
different rules might be programmed in College another Cambridge mathematic
this way. To the observer, each disconti ian, James Clerk Maxwell, was
nuity would seem to be a 'miracle', an appointed as natural philosophy profes
event unpredictable from the apparently sor at King's. Maxwell was still in post
immutable course of the machine. Yet in when Babbage's calculating engine was
fact the manager of the system would at last put on public show at the 1862
have planned it beforehand. His onlook industrial exhibition in London. At the
ers were almost always impressed. same time, Maxwell published a radical
294
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

new model of the behaviour of luminifer- Papers and Airy Papers), the Royal Society
ous ether, the principal topic of mid-Vic Library (Herschel Papers) and the British Library
(Babbage Papers).
torianmathematical physics. Maxwell
cited Goodeve's textbook for the Notes
mechanical analogy he constructed for
British
1 Babbage
Library toMSSDupin,
ADD 3718X
20 December
f.l 17. 1833,
the ether. In this model, Maxwell envis
2 For science as a system of organised trust
aged an infinite array of gear wheels sep (rather than scepticism) see Steven Shapln, A
arated by the idle wheels he found Social History of Truth (Chicago: Chicago Univers
described in Goodeve's text. The velocity ity Press, 1994), chapter 2. The sources ment
ioned here are Ludwick Fleck, Genesis and
of each gear wheel was analogised to the Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: Chicago
local magnetic field strength and the University Press, 1979); T. S. Kuhn, 'Second
Thoughts on Paradigms', in The Essential Tension
motion of the idle wheels to the flow of (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), chapt
electric current. This model warranted er12; I. Lakatos, 'Falsification and the Methodo
logyof Scientific Research Programmes', in I.
Maxwell's calculation that by setting the Lakatos and A. Musgrave, eds.. Criticism and the
Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge
torsion coefficient of the gears and University Press, 1971), 91-195; M. Callon, 'El
wheels appropriately, the speed of prop ements pour une sociologie de la traduction', L'An
agation of an impulse through the gear néesociologique (Paris: PUF, 1986), 169-208.
3 Astronomer Royal's Report, 1853, cited by J.
array would be identical to that of light A. Bennett, 'George Biddell Airy and Horology',
in the ether.58 Annuls of Science 37 (1980), 269-85, p. 282; Walt
er Maunder, The Royal Observatory Greenwich
Here, perhaps, was another legacy of (London: Religious Tract Society, 1900), p. 137.
See Robert W. Smith, 'A National Observatory
Babbage's project. It had become plausi Transformed: Greenwich in the Nineteenth Cent
ble that natural objects really behaved in ury', Journal for the History of Astronomy 22
(1991), 5-20.
the way that geared engines did. At the 4 George Dodd, Days at the Factories (Charles
end of his Economy of Machinery and Knight: London, 1843), p.l.
Manufactures, first published three 5 Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capitale du XIXe
Siècle, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 2nd éd. (Paris: Le
decades earlier, Babbage had described Cerf, 1993), p. 39. Thomas Richards, The Com
'a higher science' which 'is now prepar modity Culture of Victorian England (Verso: Lon
don, 1991); Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas:
ing its fetters for the minutest atoms the Expositions Universelles. Great Exhibitions
that nature has created: already it has and World Fairs 1851-1939 (Manchester Univers
ity Press: Manchester, 1991); Armand Martelait.
chained the etherial fluid, and bound in L'invention de la communication (La Découverte:
one harmonious system all the intricate Paris, 1994), pp. 132-9. For Chance Brothers and
Martineau see Clive Behagg, 'Secrecy, Ritual and
and splendid phenomena of light. It is Folk Violence: the Opacity of the Workplace in the
the science of calculation which becomes First Half of the Nineteenth Century', in R. D.
Storch, éd., Popular Culture and Custom in Nine
continually more necessary at each step teenth Century England (London: Croom Helm,
of our progress, and which must ult 1982), 154-79, pp. 156-9.
6 William Ashworth, The Calculating Eye'.
imately govern the whole of the applica British Journal for the History of Science 28
tionsof science to the arts of life'.59 It is (1994).
7 Herschel's comments on the 'superiority' of
significant for this story of the product theory are In his Preliminary Discourse on the
ion of knowledge and machines that a Study of Natural Philosophy (London: Longman,
Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831), p. 132. His
prophecy of the role of tabulated calcula remarks on instruments are in his Outlines of
tion in classical physics appears at the Astronomy, 4th ed. (London: Longman, Brown,
Green and Longmans, 1851), p.76.
end of a text on the factory system. 8 G. B. Airy, 'Report on the Progress of Astron
Thanks to Billy Ashworth, Bob Brain, William omy during the Present Century', in Report of the
Ginn, Ben Marsden, Iwan Moras, Otto Sibum, Second Meeting of the British Association for the
Richard Staley and Andy Warwick for their gener Advancement of Science (John Murray: London
oushelp. In this paper I cite manuscripts held in 1833) 125-89 p. 184; Airy to Harcourt. 5 Septem
the Cambridge University Library (Babbage ber 1832. in Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray,
295
Simon SCHAFFER

Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence of the Une histoire intellectuelle de l'économie politique
British Associationfor the Advancement of Science (Paris: EHESS, 1992), p 411 and Mattelart, L'in
(Royal Historical Society: London. 1984), p. 151. vention de communication, p. 78.
9 D. J. F. Arago, 'Mémoire sur un moyen très 19 Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a
simple de s'affranchir des erreurs personelles', in Philosopher (London: Longmans. 1864), pp.
M. J. A. Barrai, éd.. Oeuvres complètes de 138-40 (Babbage's emphasis).
François Arapo (Gide: Paris, 1859), 5: 233-44. On 20 Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization takes com
mechanizing the personal equation see Simon mand: a contribution to anonymous history (Nor
Schaffer, 'Astronomers Mark Time', Science in ton: New York, 1969). p. 3: 'history writing is ever
Context 2 (1988), 115-145. tied to the fragment'. For London's geography see
Crisis'
10 SeeinforCharles exampleBabbage
Doron and
Swade,his The
Calculating
Tables Iwan Morus, Jim Secord and Simon Schaffer.
'Scientific London'. in Celina Fox éd.,
Engines (London: Science Museum, 1991), pp. London-World City 1800-1840 (Yale: New Haven,
1-5. 1992/Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Essen), pp. 129-42.
1 1 The best discussion of the problem of tables' 21 Henry Colebrooke, "Address on presenting
reliability is Andrew Warwick, The Laboratory of the Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society to
Theory', in M. Norton Wise, éd.. Values of Preci Charles Babbage', Memoirs of the Astronomical
sion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Society 1 (1825), 509-12, pp. 509-10.
1994); the citation is from Dodd, Days at the Fact 22 Charles Babbage, Passages, p. 1 14. See H. W.
ories, p. 517. Buxton, Memoir of the Life and Labours of the late
12 Airy, "Report on the Progress of Astronomy Charles Babbage, ed. R. A. Hyman (1880; Camb
during the Present Century', p. 124; for the fi ridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 80-102;
scal-mil tary state see John Brewer, The Sinews of Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the
Power: War Money and the English State (London: Computer (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
Unwin Hyman, 1989). 1982), pp. 123-35; Michael Lindgren, Glory and
13 Allan Chapman, 'Sir George Airy and the Con Failure: the Difference Engines of Johann Muller,
cept of International Standards in Science. Time Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz
keeping
(1985)' 321-8 and Navigation',
and William Vistas
Ginn, Philosophers
in Astronomyand 28 (Cambridge, MA.: M.I.T.Press, 1990), pp. 52-59.
23 Babbage, 'On a Method of Expressing by
Artisans: Men of Science and Instrument Makers in Signs the Action of Machinery', Philosophical
London 1820-1860 (PhD thesis, Kent University, Transactions 116 (1826). 250-65 and draft in
1991), p. 237; Herschel to Babbage, 25 October Cambridge University Library MSS ADD 8705.2 1 ;
1814, Royal Society HS 2.31. [Lardner], 'Babbage's Calculating Engine', pp.
14 John Herschel, The Yard, the Pendulum and 318-319. For Lardner's collaboration on mechani
the Metre' (1863), in Familiar Lectures on Scient cal notation with Babbage, and its publicity in
ificSubjects (London: Alexander Strahan, 1867), Paris and Berlin, see Babbage to Dupin, 20
419-51, pp. 429-32; see Julian Hoppit. 'Reform December 1833 and Babbage to Humboldt,
ing Britain's Weights and Measures', English His December 1833, British Library MSS ADD 37188
torical Review (1993), 82-104. ff. 117, 123.
15 Charles Babbage, 'On tables of the constants 24 Ada Lovelace. 'Sketch of the Analytical
of nature and art', Smithsonian Institution Annual Engine by L.F.Menabrea', Taylor's Scientific Memo
Report (1856), 289-302, pp. 289, 293-^. For 'con irs3 (1843), 666-731. p. 690; Maxine Berg. The
stants' see Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance Machinery Question and the Making of Political
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Economy 1815-1848 (Cambridge University
p.57. Press: Cambridge. 1980), pp. 182-89; Babbage,
16 William Thomson, Popular Lectures and On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
Addresses (London: Macmillan, 1894), 2: 120. 4th ed. (London: Charles Knight, 1835), pp. 120,
For background to Thomson's remarks, see 175. See Richard M. Romano, The Economic
Simon Schaffer, 'Victorian Metrology and its Ideas of Charles Babbage'. History of Political
Instrumentation: A Manufactory of Ohms', in Economy 14 ( 1982), 385-405, p. 391. For Marx's
Susan Cozzens and Robert Bud, eds. Invisible response to the Babbage principle see Karl Marx,
Connexions (Bellingham: SPIE Press, 1992), Capital: Volume One (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
23-56. p. 42. 1976), p.469: 'the collective worker now pos
17 Swade, The Tables Crisis'; Michael Williams, sesses all the qualities necessary for production
The Difference Engines', Computer Journal 19 in an equal degree of excellence, and expends
(1976). 82-9. them in the most economical way'.
18 Babbage, A Letter to Humphry Davy (London: 25 Babbage, Economy of Machinery, pp. 54,
Booth, 1822), p.8. The gift from Didot in 1819 is 250-1: Buxton Memoir of Babbage. p. 194. Very
recorded at the front of Babbage's copy of the sine useful discussions of the theory of calculation
tables, Cambridge University Library MSS ADD involved in the engines are Jean Mosconi,
8705.37. For other responses to Prony, see 'Charles Babbage: vers une théorie du calcul
[Dionysius Lardner], 'Babbage's Calculating mécanique'. Revue de l'Histoire des Sciences 36
Engines', Edinburgh Review 59 (1834), 263-327, (1983). 69-107 and especially Marie-José
p. 275. For the Revolutionary context of Prony's Durand-Richard, "Charles Babbage: de l'Ecole
work see Lorraine Daston's forthcoming paper in Algébrique anglaise à la 'Machine Analytique'
Critical Inquiry (1994). For Prony, geodesy and Mathématiques. Informatique. et Sciences
the division of labour see Jean-Claude Perrot, Humaines. 118 (1992), 5-31.
296
 BABBAGE'S CALCULATING ENGINES AND THE FACTORY SYSTEM

26 Babbage. Economy of Machinery, pp. 379, of Mass-production Engineering', Business His

388; Hyman, Babbage p.86; Buxton, Memoir of tory 17 (1975), 109-49, p. 113. For Chartist
Babbage. pp. 215, 111. For Babbage on honours demonstrations see Dorothy Thompson, The
see The Exposition of 1851. 2nd ed. (London: Chartists (Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1984), ch.
John Murray, 1951), pp.220-49 and for the 3.
Bonapartist connection see Reflections on the 36 Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures
Decline of Science in England (London: Fellowes, (London: Charles Knight, 1835), pp. 20-21. 25;
1930), pp. 25-7. Manchester as it is. pp. 217, 32-33. Further ev
27 Hyman, Babbage. p. 192; Carolyn Cooper, idence is available in Maxine Berg, éd.. Technology
The Portsmouth System of Manufacture', Tech and Toil in Nineteenth Century Britain (London:
nology and Culture 25 (1984), 182-225, p. 213. CSE Books, 1973), esp. p. 159.
For Watkins' models see Watkins to Babbage, 15 37 Babbage to Wellington, 23 December 1834,
January 1834, British Library MSS ADD 37188 British Library MSS ADD 4061 1 f. 181.
f. 160. For machine exhibitions in the early nine
teenth century see Richard Altick, The Shows of 38 Babbage, (1822)
mechanism' The science
in Buxton,
of number
Memoirreduced
of Babto
London (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1978), pp. bage, p. 65.
375-89. For the Analytical Engine and the
Jacquard Loom, see Lovelace, 'Sketch of the Anal 39 Buxton, Memoir of Babbage. p.86.
ytical Engine", p. 706; for the Jacquard Loom's 40 William Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and
effects on the weavers, see Dorothy George, Lon Machines (London, 1861), p. v; Samuel Smiles,
don Life in the Eighteenth Century (London: Pere Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool
grine. 1966), p. 191. Makers (London, 1863). The 'Life of Clement' is
28 Cooper, 'Portsmouth System'; Peter chapter 3.
Linebaugh, 'Technological Repression and the 41 K. R. Gilbert, 'Machine-Tools', in С Singer et
Origin of the Wage', London Hanged (Har- al, eds.. History of Technology Volume 4 (Oxford:
mondsworth: Penguin, 1991), chapter 11. Clarendon, 1958), 417-41; Musson, 'Whitworth
Thanks to William Ashworth for information and the Growth of Mass Production Engineering',
about Samuel Bentham's role. p. 115.
29 Cooper, 'Portsmouth System', pp. 213-14; 42 "Autobiography of Thomas Wood' in John
Linebaugh, The London Hanged, pp. 399-401. Burnett, éd.. Useful Toil Autobiographies of Worki
30 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English ngPeople (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p.
Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 310; Nasmyth, Autobiography, p. 125.
pp. 889, 915; John Rule, The Labouring Classes 43 Buxton, Memoir of Babbage, pp. 81-2, 97;
in Early Industrial England (London: Longman, Hyman, Babbage, pp. 125, 130-2; Nasmyth,
1986), pp. 357-63. Autobiography, p. 130. For the move to Dorset
31 E. P. Thompson, The Moral Economy of the Street, see Babbage to Clement, 18 May 1832,
English Crowd'. Past and Present 38 (1967) and British Library MSS ADD 37186 f.400. For
Thompson, Customs in Common (London: Merlin, Clement's refusal to give bills, see Clement to
1991), chapters 4 and 5; Michel Foucault, Sur- Babbage, 18 November 1829, British Library
vexSXir et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gal MSS ADD 37184, f. 419.
limard. 1975), part 3 and Foucault (with M. 44 Hyman, Babbage. pp. 124, 128 and Jarvis to
Perrot and J. P. Barou), 'L'oeil du pouvoir', in J. Babbage, February 1831, British Library MSS
Bentham, Le Panoptique (Paris: Bellond, 1977). ADD 37185 f.419. The best discussion of the fight
For customary skill see John Rule, The Property with Clement is William Ginn. Philosophers and
of Skill in the Period of Manufacture', in Patrick Artisans: the relationship between men of science
Joyce, éd.. The Historical Meanings of Work (Camb and instrument makers in London 1820-1860
ridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), (PhD thesis, Kent, 1991), pp. 157-69.
99-118. 45 Babbage to Wellington, July 1834, in Buxton,
32 Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures Memoir of Babbage. p. 104; Jarvis and Clement to
1700-1820 (London: Fontána, 1985), p. 229. For Babbage, in Hyman, Babbage: pp. 131-2.
factory tourism see Stephen Marcus, Engels. 46 Wright to Babbage. 18 June 1834 and 13
Manchester and the Working Class (New York: January 1839, British Library MSS ADD 37188
Norton, 1985), pp. 30-66; Francis Klingender, Art f.390 and 37191 ff.99-100; compare Hyman,
and the Industrial Revolution (Frogmore: Paladin, Babbage, pp. 66, 107.
1972), pp. 109-117. 47 Babbage. 'Notes for Economy of Manufact
33 Manchester as it is (Manchester: Love and ure', University Library Cambridge MSS ADD
Barton, 1839), p. 217. 8705.25 p. 10; Babbage, 'Report on the Calculat
34 William Cooke Taylor, Factories and the Fac ing Machine', 1830. British Library MSS ADD
tory System (London: Jeremiah How, 1844). p. 1 1. 37185 f.264; Nasmyth, Autobiography, pp.
For his ethnography see Christopher Herbert, 148-9, 179. Compare Ginn, Philosophers and
Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination in Artisans, p. 167, on the uniqueness of artisan
the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of skill.
Chicago Press. 1991), pp. 61-64. 48 John Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial
35 Manchester as it is, pp. 201-2, 210. For Nas- Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
myth on the strikes see Nasmyth, Autobiography, 1974), pp. 224-5; Ian Inkster, Science and Tech
pp. 222-8. For Manchester and machine tools see nology in History (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp.
A. E. Musson, 'Joseph Whitworth and the Growth 82-83.
297
Simon SCHAFFER

49 Babbage, Economy of Machinery, p. 67; Glory and Failure, p. 280; Farr. Tables of Lif
Charles Hotzapffel, Turning and Mechanical etimes (1864) in Williams, Computing Technology,
Manipulation, 5 vols. (London, 1843-1884), 2: p. 180.
984-91; Nasmyth to Babbage, 22 June 1855 and 55 (William Hamilton), 'Study of Mathematics',
Babbage to Whitworth, July 1855, British Library Edinburgh Review 62 (1836), 409-55, p. 429;
MSS ADD ff.249, 366. The cartoon is in de Mor Babbage, Passages, p. 139.
gan to Babbage, 21 October 1839, British Library
MSS ADD 37191 1. 256. 56 Charles Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise.
50 Michel Callon, 'Introduction' in Callon, éd.. 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1838), pp. 32-43;
La Science et ses Réseaux (Paris: La Découverte, Lady Byron to King, 21 June 1833, in Doris Lan-
1989), p. 14 n.2. gley Moore, Ada Countess of Lovelace (London:
John Murray. 1977), p.44. Darwin's use of Bab-
51 Lindgren Glory and Failure, pp. 279-82 bage's argument is discussed in Adrian Desmond
Michael R. Williams, A History of Computing Tech and James Moore, Darwin (Harmondsworth: Pen
nology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1985), guin, 1991), chapter 15.
pp. 174-82; Babbage, Passages, pp. 150-9 (Bab-
bage's emphasis). 57 Thomas Goodeve, The Elements of Mecha
52 Mattelart, L'invention de la communication, p. nism( London: Longmans, 1860), pp. 72 (for idle
135; Prince Albert, speech at the Guildhall, 1849, wheels) and 136-7 (for counting wheels); F. J. С
in Robert Brain, Going to the Fair: Readings in the Hearnshaw, History of King's College London
Culture of Nineteenth Century Exhibitions (Camb (London: Harrap, 1929), pp. 191. 247-60. Some
ridge: Whipple Museum. 1993), p. 24. of these King's College machines, including the
counting machines, are now illustrated in Alan
53 Tine Bruland, 'Industrial Conflict as a source Morton and Jane Wess, Public and Private Sci
of technical innovation: the development of the ence: the King George III Collection (London: Sci
automatic spinning mule'. Economy and Society ence Museum, 1993), pp. 35-37 and 552-67.
11 (1982), 91-121; Ure, Philosophy of Manufact
ures, p. 367; William Lazonick, 'Industrial Rela 58 James Clerk Maxwell, "On Physical Lines of
tions and Technical Change: the case of the Force: Part 3'. in W. D. Niven, éd.. Scientific
self-acting mule', Cambridge Journal of Economi Papers of James Clerk Maxwell 2 vols. (Camb
cs 3 (1979), 231-262; Raphael Samuel, The ridge; Cambridge University Press, 1890), 1:
Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand 499-500. See Salvo d'Agostino, 'Weber and
Technology in mid -Victorian Britain', History Maxwell on the Discovery of the Velocity of Light',
Workshop Journal 3 (1977), 6-72, p. 41). Mary in M. D. Grmek et al., eds., On Scientific Discov
Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) was subtitled The ery (Dordrecht: Reidel. 1980), 281-93. p. 287 and
modern Prometheus". Daniel M. Siegel, Innovation in Maxwell's Electr
54 Airy to Goulburn, September 1842, Royal omagnetic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univers
Greenwich Observatory MSS 6/427 ff.65-66; Airy ity Press, 1991), pp. 136-43.
to Trevelyan, 30 September 1857, in Lindgren, 59 Babbage, Economy of Machinery, p. 387.

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