Charles Babbage Charles Babbage may have spent his life in vain, trying to make a machine considered by most of his friends to be ridiculous. 150 years ago, Babbage drew hundreds of drawings projecting the fundamentals on which today's computers are founded. But the technology was not there to meet his dreams. He was born on December 26, 1791, in Totnes, Devonshire, England. As a child he was always interested about the mechanics of everything and in the supernatural. He reportedly once tried to prove the existence of the devil by making a circle in his own blood on the floor and reciting the Lord's Prayer backward. In college, he formed a ghos