He was an odd man though, Babbage, and he does rather live up to the idea of an early computer nerd. Tennyson wrote a poem which included the line: “Every moment dies a man/Every moment one is born.” And he wrote back, [as Babbage] “If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of death. I would suggest that the next edition of your poems should read: ‘Every moment dies a man/Every moment 1 1/16 is born.’ Strictly speaking . . . Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.” What a man.

— Stephen Fry, about mathematician Charles Babbage, in QI.