Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 4 is called "To Throw the Powers of Thought Into Wheel-Work (Lo, the Raptured Arithmatician)." In this chapter, Gleick looks at the career and inventions of Charles Babbage, a brilliant Englishman who lived in the 19th century. Babbage had wide interests, including mathematics, engineering, cryptography, railroads, and industrial machinery.

Babbage was fascinated with compiling information into tables. From his own research, he created statistical lists about livestock, fabric, letter combinations in various languages and other facts. He was also fascinated with machinery.

In the 17th century, a Scotch mathematician named John Napier devised a way to multiply and divide numbers by adding or subtracting their logarithms. Tables were calculated and printed so that a person could easily look up the logarithm of any number. At the time, calculations were performed manually, with ample opportunity for error especially in the more complex...