the adventures of alfred tennyson and charles babbage

charles babbage, the english mathematician and father of the modern computer wrote the following to alfred tennyson in response to his poem, “the vision of sin” »

In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.

… 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 that of death. I would suggest:

Every moment dies a man,
Every moment 1 ¹/₁₆ is born.

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.”