# Royal Society **Domain:** Scientific institutions / computing history **Doc Type:** Institution Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The **Royal Society of London**, founded in 1660, is a scientific learned society whose fellowship, reports, correspondence, and patronage helped transmit mathematical and mechanical projects across generations. ## Machine-Intelligence Lineage Leibniz demonstrated his calculating machine in London in 1673 and was elected a Fellow that year. In 1823 a Royal Society committee recommended government support for Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. The institution therefore forms a documented bridge between early mechanical calculation and the nineteenth-century engine program. ## Evidence Ledger ### Established - Leibniz was elected a Fellow in 1673 in the context of his London scientific activity and calculating machine. - A Royal Society committee evaluated Babbage's engine and endorsed government support in 1823. ### Strongly indicated - The Society transmitted legitimacy, evaluation, and state access across the mechanical-calculation lineage. ### Plausible - Learned-society review supplied an institutional prototype for later state-sponsored computing research. ### Unresolved - The causal weight of this institutional precedent in particular twentieth-century programs. ## Sources / Provenance - [Royal Society, Leibniz collection](https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/s/rs/people/fst00000615). - [Science Museum, Charles Babbage and the Difference Engine](https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/charles-babbages-difference-engines-and-science-museum). ## Relationships - **Fellow:** [[wiki/Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]]. - **Engine review:** [[wiki/Charles Babbage|Charles Babbage]]. - **Method:** [[wiki/Transmitted Objective|Transmitted Objective]] and [[wiki/Coordination Ladder|Coordination Ladder]]. - **Source:** [[articles/A History of Machine Intelligence|A History of Machine Intelligence]].