Top ten nerds and geeks

By Chris Stevens on 16 November 2006, 5:11pm

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Robinson's elaborate cartoon drawings of magnificent machines and contraptions have made his name synonymous with gadgets. His sketches included such wonders as "The Wart Chair. A simple apparatus for removing a wart from the top of the head". His machines are gorgeous sprawling monsters of impossibility and madness that rival any modern design team's efforts.

A contemporary of Socrates, Diogenes puts modern geeks to shame. If you think being holed up in your room playing videogames is intense, consider Diogenes. He spent many of his years living in a barrel outside the temple of Cybele in Athens, formulating philosophies. Alexander the Great is said to have visited Diogenes in his barrel, but from inside the dark barrel the only thing Diogenes could bring himself to say to Alexander was, "Stand out of my sunlight".

Aside from his obvious geek credentials (inventing the programmable computer), Babbage was extraordinarily nerdy when it came to his everyday life. He is said to have walked around a factory counting broken window panes before writing a study called a 'Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows'. Using his remarkable powers of deduction, Babbage concluded that 14 were broken by "drunken men, women or boys". He also baked himself in an oven at over 100 degrees Celsius to "see what would happen".