The Analytical Engine, created by Charles Babbage in the mid-1830s, was a mechanical computer that used punch cards for programming and had a processing unit and short-term memory. Babbage first invented the specialized difference engine before broadening his focus to create the multipurpose analytical engine. The engine could solve equations and store up to 1,000 numbers. Although Babbage never built a full prototype, his ideas are echoed in modern computers.
The Analytical Engine was a mechanical computer created by English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage in the mid-1830s. Although Babbage never built the entire machine, the Analytical Engine is generally considered to be the forerunner of the modern computer. It used a punch card programming system and had a processing unit to perform calculations and a short-term memory bank to store work data.
Babbage was a mathematics professor at Cambridge. While working with mathematical tables in 1812, Babbage had the idea of a machine that could perform calculations automatically. He first invented the difference engine, known today as the #1 difference engine. 1.
The difference engine was very specialized. It was designed to work with polynomials only. When the project stalled, Babbage decided to broaden his focus and create a multipurpose machine.
In 1839 he began to devote all his academic thought to the development of the analytical engine. Babbage envisioned the engine as being made of brass and powered by a steam engine. The data was entered into the analytical engine using punch cards. Babbage borrowed the idea of punched cards from the textile industry, where they were used to program power looms.
The engine had three different types of card readers for the cards that programmed the machine. One type of card entered mathematical operations, another directed the load and save actions, and the third fed the machine’s numeric constants. The programming language was similar to the assembly languages used a century later.
Once the data was entered, the analytical engine could solve equations by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, as well as performing other functions similar to those of a computer. During the calculation, the analytical engine was able to use what is basically clipboard memory. It could store 1,000 numbers, each of which could be up to 50 digits long. When the calculations have been completed, the analytical engine could produce the answers in paper, punched or graphical format. It could also make trays that could later be used to make printing plates.
Modern computer scientists acknowledge that Babbage was ahead of his time. All parts of his analytical engine are echoed in modern computers. Like many visionaries, Babbage had a hard time getting others to recognize his genius. A full prototype was never built because Babbage could not get funding. He created parts of the machine, which survive in museums. It took nearly 100 years after Babbage’s death in 1871 before computers comparable to the Analytical Engine were built.
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