901
This view looks at one end of a trial portion of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1, which is one of the earliest automatic calculators and a celebrated icon in the pre-history of the computer.
Charles Babbage was a brilliant thinker and mathematician who devised the Difference Engine to automate the production of error-free mathematical tables. In 1823 he secured £1,500 from the British government and employed an engineer to construct the device. However, the project collapsed in 1833 when the engineer left the project.
By that time the government had spent £17,000 on the project, the equivalent then of the cost of two major warships. Recent research has shown that the engineer's work was adequate to create a functioning machine and that the project actually collapsed because of economics, politics, Babbage's temperament and his style of directing the enterprise.
After the attempt at making the first difference engine fell through, Babbage worked to design a more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine marks the transition from mechanised arithmetic to fully-fledged general-purpose computation. It is largely on it that Babbage's standing as computer pioneer rests.
Ada Lovelace (Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815-27 November 1852)) was the first to recognise that the Analytical Engine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm (to calculate Bernoulli numbers) intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer.
Seen in the Science Museum, London.
901
This view looks at one end of a trial portion of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1, which is one of the earliest automatic calculators and a celebrated icon in the pre-history of the computer.
Charles Babbage was a brilliant thinker and mathematician who devised the Difference Engine to automate the production of error-free mathematical tables. In 1823 he secured £1,500 from the British government and employed an engineer to construct the device. However, the project collapsed in 1833 when the engineer left the project.
By that time the government had spent £17,000 on the project, the equivalent then of the cost of two major warships. Recent research has shown that the engineer's work was adequate to create a functioning machine and that the project actually collapsed because of economics, politics, Babbage's temperament and his style of directing the enterprise.
After the attempt at making the first difference engine fell through, Babbage worked to design a more complex machine called the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine marks the transition from mechanised arithmetic to fully-fledged general-purpose computation. It is largely on it that Babbage's standing as computer pioneer rests.
Ada Lovelace (Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815-27 November 1852)) was the first to recognise that the Analytical Engine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm (to calculate Bernoulli numbers) intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer.
Seen in the Science Museum, London.