Page "Charles Babbage" Paragraph 6

His father's money allowed Charles to receive instruction from several schools and tutors during the course of his elementary education.

Around the age of eight he was sent to a country school in Alphington near Exeter to recover from a life-threatening fever.

His parents ordered that his " brain was not to be taxed too much " and Babbage felt that " this great idleness may have led to some of my childish reasonings.

" For a short time he attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Totnes, South Devon, but his health forced him back to private tutors for a time.

He then joined a 30-student Holmwood academy, in Baker Street, Enfield, Middlesex under the Reverend Stephen Freeman.

The academy had a well-stocked library that prompted Babbage's love of mathematics.

He studied with two more private tutors after leaving the academy.

Of the first, a clergyman near Cambridge, Babbage said, " I fear I did not derive from it all the advantages that I might have done.

" The second was an Oxford tutor from whom Babbage learned enough of the Classics to be accepted to Cambridge.