Passages from the Life of a Philosopher: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, credited to Charles Babbage, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Passages from the Life of a Philosopher by Charles Babbage. Read in English by LibriVox volunteers. Some men write their lives to save themselves from ennui, careless of the amount they inflict on their readers. Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them up. Others, again, write their own life from a different motive—from fear that the vampires of literature might make it their prey. I have frequently had applications to write my life, both from my countrymen and from foreigners. Some caterers for the public offered to pay me for it. Others required that I should pay them for its insertion; others offered to insert it without charge. One proposed to give me a quarter of a column gratis, and as many additional lines of eloge as I chose to write and pay for at ten-pence per line. To many of these I sent a list of my works, with the remark that they formed the best life of an author; but nobody cared to insert them. I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work. The remarkable circumstances attending those Calculating Machines, on which I have spent so large a portion of my life, make me wish to place on record some account of their past history. As, however, such a work would be utterly uninteresting to the greater part of my countrymen, I thought it might be rendered less unpalatable by relating some of my experience amongst various classes of society, widely differing from each other, in which I have occasionally mixed. This volume does not aspire to the name of an autobiography. It relates a variety of isolated circumstances in which I have taken part—some of them arranged in the order of time, and others grouped together in separate chapters, from similarity of subject. The selection has been made in some cases from the importance of the matter. In others, from the celebrity of the persons concerned ; whilst several of them furnish interesting illustrations of human character. - Summary by From the Preface

Recording facts

• Recording title: Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
• Author credits: Charles Babbage
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 40
• Listed recording duration: 15:28:04

Catalogue topics

• nonfiction
• science
• mathematics
• invention
• computers

Opening tracks: first 24 of 40

1. 00 - Dedication and Preface — 3:39
2. 01 - My Ancestors — 10:04
3. 02 - Childhood — 17:10
4. 03 - Boyhood — 13:49
5. 04 - Cambridge — 30:15
6. 05 - Difference Engine No. 1 Part 1 — 28:06
7. 06 - Difference Engine No. 1 Part 2 — 29:39
8. 07 - Statement relative to the Difference Engine, drawn up by the late Sir H. Nicolas from the Author’s Papers Part 1 — 54:10
9. 08 - Difference Engine No. 2 — 28:34
10. 09 - Of the Analytical Engine Part 1 — 34:48
11. 10 - Of the Analytical Engine Part 2 — 29:00
12. 11 - Of the Mechanical Notation — 9:25
13. 12 - The Exhibition of 1862 — 38:14
14. 13 - The Late Prince Consort — 8:14
15. 14 - Recollections of the Duke of Wellington — 24:24
16. 15 - Recollections of Wollaston, Davy, and Rogers — 17:55
17. 16 - Recollections of Laplace, Biot, and Humboldt — 20:26
18. 17 - Experience by Water — 13:13
19. 18 - Experience by Fire — 25:16
20. 19 - Experience Amongst Workmen — 8:04
21. 20 - Picking Locks and Deciphering — 17:31
22. 21 - Experience in St. Giles’s — 16:35
23. 22 - Theatrical Experience — 15:06
24. 23 - Electioneering Experience — 29:50

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.