🆒 of the Week: Charles Babbage and his Engines
W 7/52
Computers are taking an immense space in our lives. Look around you, in your pockets, on your wrist, your homes, your offices… They are everywhere, they are mini, pretty and somehow useful..
Today I want to talk about two gorgeous engines that are considered as the first computers ever designed (not made). And the beasts are far from being small.
In the time of Babbage, in the 1830’s, bankers, astronomists, scientists were all relying on mathematical tables to check calculation results. These books were full of errors (error is human) which made them unreliable and cause a lot of frustration to its users.
“I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam” — Charles Babbage
Babbage decided to build a mechanical calculation engine that could be accurate and be used to create reliable tables. He invented two designs: the Difference engine, and later one the Analytical Engine..
The first one was capable to perform arithmetic operations based on finite differences (multiplications and divisions were transformed in additions), while the Analytical Engine could do more complex operations, be programmable and save data in a memory! Yes you read me well! Programmable and with a memory!
The Analytical Engine was operated by pure mechanic and steam. These are its four parts:
1- A mill, which was the section which did the calculations — a sort of CPU
2- The store, where the information was kept recorded — a sort of Memory
3- The reader, which would allow data to be entered using punched cards — a sort of keyboard
4- The printer, to output results on paper — a sort of screen :)
Babbage never built his machines, fundings were unfortunately withdrawn from him. In 1991 (the year of my birth fyi), the London’s Science Museum decided to build the Difference engine purely based on Babbage specifications and design. The engine contains more than 2000 components, weighing over 5 tons.
Once built, it was finally possible to test if the machine calculations were correct or not.. and no more suspense, they miraculously were!
The machine is available at the London Museum, and a replica is available at the Computer History Museum of Mountain View!
Silicon Valley friends, I highly recommend this museum, full of machines, more ingenious one to another! Very very Cool 😎💻!
Have a nice weekend, Share the Cool Fam!
