Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. Charles Babbage

id="ulink_a172a23b-5166-5dc4-9bbd-b50de1491dd2">It can not only calculate the millions the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer squandered, but it can deal with the smallest quantities; nay, it feels even for zeros.23 It is as conscious as Lord Derby himself is of the presence of a negative quantity, and it is not beyond the ken of either of them to foresee the existence of impossible ones.24

23 It discovers the roots of equations by feeling whether all the figures in a certain column are zeros.

24 It may be necessary to explain to the unmath­e­mat­i­cal reader and to the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer that impossible quantities in algebra are something like mare’s-nests in ordinary life.

      Yet should any unexpected course of events ever raise the {111} ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer to his former dignity, I am sure he will be its friend as soon as he is convinced that it can be made useful to him.

      It may possibly enable him to un-muddle even his own financial accounts, and to———

      But as I have no wish to crucify him, I will leave his name in obscurity.

      The Herostratus of Science, if he escape oblivion, will be linked with the destroyer of the Ephesian Temple.