Wikipedia charles babbage biography

Saturday night social gatherings held by inventor Charles Babbage in the 1830s

Charles Babbage's Saturday night soirées were gatherings held by the mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage at his home in Dorset Street, Marylebone, London from 1828 and into the 1840s.

The soirées were attended by the cultural elite of the time.

Scientific soirées

See also: Salon (gathering)

Babbage left England when his wife and father died in 1827. On his return in 1828, now in possession of a considerable inheritance, he began to host Saturday evening parties.^[1] The science historian James A.

Secord describes the parties as "scientific soirées". Secord writes that Babbage imported the idea from France, and once established, such soirées "became one of the chief ways in which scientific discussion could take place on a more sustained basis within polite society."^[2]

In her autobiography, the English writer and sociologist H