Charles Margerison - Amazing Inventors

Welcome to this inspirational eBook, which provides you with a unique and fascinating collection of life stories. It is part of a series developed by the Amazing People Club, written in the form of a BioView, which is a short name for a biographical interview.

A BioView is a new concept that reveals amazing stories, as if the person has given an interview about their life. Each of the stories can normally be read in around five to ten minutes. They are based on the known facts of each individuals life, plus what they may have felt about their experiences.

The unique format and flow enables each persons story to come alive, as if it is being personally told to you. Each one of them reflects the interests, emotions and passions linked to the amazing persons achievements. They are stories that can provide inspiration and ideas for your own journey through life and we hope you will enjoy them.

The career notes at the end of each story supply information on each persons life, reflecting their achievements and some of the recognition they have received. They provide the background to the stories, and an easy way of learning about people who made major contributions to our world.

The stories show how ordinary people did extraordinary things to tackle problems and opportunities. Amazing people all had one thing in common. Rather than accepting the situation before them, they developed and implemented plans of action to make improvements. We can all learn from their experiences and the ways they dealt with the challenges and, in this eBook, you can understand their troubles and triumphs.

To learn more about the Amazing People Club books and audios, please visit www.amazingpeopleclub.com .

A colleague saw me with a book of logarithms

He asked me what I was thinking about

I am thinking that all these tables might be calculated by machinery

It was that kind of practical challenge that spurred me on

Practical theory and machines interested me

But, I was fortunate to survive childhood

No one knew how to cure my life threatening fever

Teachers were told that my brain was not to be taxed too much

Maybe that led to my interest in creating a machine to do just that

However, before that, there were many problems to solve

At various times, due to the illness, I was unable to go to school

With private tuition, I read books on mathematics

Including the work of Leibniz, Lagrange, Simpson, and Lacroix

These I studied before going to Cambridge University in 1810

The tutors were teaching Newtonian calculus, rather than Leibnizian

I helped found The Analytical Society to modernize mathematics

The Ghost Club that investigated the supernatural, appealed to me

Applications of maths was a special interest

It enabled me to become the leading student in the subject

The University awarded me an honorary degree

In 1828, I returned as their Lucasian Professor of Mathematics

My father was a banker and church warden

We had different ways of looking at the world

He did not approve of me marrying Georgiana Whitmore in 1814

Aged 23, I was still a student

He said I did not have enough money to support a family

Georgiana and I had eight children

Sadly, only three lived to adulthood, and my wife died in 1827

The same year my father and two sons died

This sustained period of loss sent me into a deep depression

Life was hard, and I devoted myself to my work

As a practical scientist, there were many ideas to explore

With others, I initiated the Astronomical Society in 1820

It was important to look upwards as well as downwards

Most of all, I had ideas on how to solve mathematical problems

The human mind is an amazing calculator

Could I create a machine to calculate more quickly and more reliably?

That was my big idea and the start of the computer age

It would automate the mass production of numbers

Yet, at that time, computers was the name given to skilled people

They calculated numerical tables, but the error rate was often high

In 1819, I had the idea for a Difference Engine

By 1822, it was operating, weighing around 15 tons, with 25,000 parts

The Royal Astronomical Society awarded me their Gold Medal

These were days, long before cable electricity

Everything was hand-operated

Many hours of laboratory work and testing followed

At last, I had the design for an improvement

Called the Analytical Engine, it was launched in 1834

The government put in 17,000 pounds, I put in 6000 pounds

After eight years, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said it was worthless

That is how the first digital computer was received

Like any great idea, it was ahead of its time

Innovation is always in danger from those without vision

Despite this, with support from colleagues, I continued on

In 1834, I helped found the Statistical Society

Through that organization I met many interesting people

In particular, I was introduced to an impressive woman

Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron

Unlike her father, her talent blossomed in mathematics

She took a great interest in my work and helped document it

Ada was one of the few who understood what I was doing

Her work helped create a computer program for the Analytical Engine

In that sense, she was the first computer programmer

Others began to make innovations

George Scheutz in 1854 built on my design in Sweden

Work that led to cryptography

My own contribution was to break a key cipher system of the time

However, there was little outside interest in the work

Looking at progress over time, I can see it needed a leap of faith

The resistance was due to my own inability to convince politicians

And equally to their short-sightedness and lack of understanding

Twice, I tried to become a politician

In 1832 and 1834, I stood, unsuccessfully, for Parliament

Therefore, I concentrated on my technical work

A number of books flowed from my quill

The first was on life assurance principles, in 1826

My table of logarithms was published a year later

Reflections on the Decline of Science in England was published in 1830

On The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures in 1832

These books combined fact with opinion

In contrast, there was another project that was very precise

In 1851, I wrote a book called The Exposition of 1851

My main thoughts were summed up in my last book

Passages from the Life of a Philosopher in 1864

The books were a way of charting the progress that I made

They covered many fields, such as lights for lighthouses

Also, I designed an ophthalmoscope to help opticians

The dynamometer car for railway maintenance was also created