Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Green, 1864. First edition. Pp xii, 496, [24]. Neatly rebacked preserving all but the top of the original spine, affecting publisher’s gilt lettering (top margin of gilt ruling missing), new endpapers, occasional spotting to contents otherwise a very good copy. Frontispiece plate showing Babbage’s Difference Engine no. 1.

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) described as “pre-eminent” among the many polymaths of his century, was the technological genius who originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage never got his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine to work, but his brilliant insights laid the way for the Computer Revolution, as the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage’s analytical design.