Charles Babbage

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Charles Babbage (December 26, 1791 – October 18, 1871) was an English mathematician, analytical philosopher and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer.

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Attributed

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

Every minute dies a man, And one and one-sixteenth is born.

I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.
- while he and John Herschel were proofreading mathematical tables for the Astronomical Society in 1821.

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.
- with regard to his Analytical Engine, the first programmable computer.