"""

    ... it is said that he [Babbage] sent the following letter to Alfred, Lord Tennyson about a couplet in "The Vision of Sin":

         Every minute dies a man,
         Every minute one is born

    I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in the next edition of your excellent poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows:

         Every minute dies a man,
         And one and a sixteenth is born

    I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.

    Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines