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 Harriet Martineau wrote: "All were eager to go to his glorious soirées and I always thought he appeared to great advantage as a host.
"[3] According to biographers Bruce Collier and James H. MacLachlan, "Babbage was a bon vivant with a love of dining out and socialising.
"[1] Hundreds of prominent people attended the soirées, including Ada Lovelace, Lady Byron, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin,[4] Charles Dickens,[5] Michael Faraday, Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, Mary Somerville, Harriet Martineau, photographic inventor Henry Fox Talbot, the actor William Macready, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, telegraph inventor Charles Wheatstone, the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, geologist Charles Lyell and his wife Mary Lyell, Mary's sister Frances, the Belgian ambassador Sylvain Van de Weyer, electrical inventor Andrew Crosse and many others.
[9] In her autobiography, Harriet Martineau describes Babbage's disappointment at his guests being more interested in this dancing doll - a toy - than in his demo of a computing machine.