Calculating machines of Babbage (Q1896036)

This handsomely-produced paperback provides German translations of the complete texts of twenty-six papers by or about Charles Babbage. They include some biographical material but the focus is his calculating machines: the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. The thirty-page introduction by the editor-translator, Dotzler, along with the copious annotations, comprehensive bibliography, name index, and illustrations make this a valuable one-volume Babbage reference work. These new translations are a reminder that they are not the first into German of Babbage's works: [On the economy of manufactures and machinery, London (1832)], for example, was quickly translated into German, among other languages. Karl Marx, however, referred to the French edition in [Das Kapital (1867)]. The selection of texts has been guided by the editor's desire to show Babbage's role in the hardware-software transformation that brought us to the present-day state of computer development. Another and more ambitious goal is to try to reveal those factors that caused Babbage's computer project to fail in his lifetime, and thereby to draw some parallels with problems in modern computer development. Is there something to be learned by comparing, on the one hand, Babbage's ongoing effort to perfect a mechanical notation with, on the other, the modern attempts to form a discipline of software engineering. The editor's introduction hints at some interesting comparisons along these lines and, by an economical choice of examples from Babbage's interests in politics, literature, and probability, conveys something of Babbage's personality and its relevance to the development of his calculating machines.