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The analytical engine was a proposed digital mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. [2] [3] It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's Difference Engine, which was a design for a simpler mechanical calculator.
The London Science Museum's difference engine, the first one actually built from Babbage's design. The design has the same precision on all columns, but in calculating polynomials, the precision on the higher-order columns could be lower. A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.
Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918) was a soldier in the Bengal Army of the East India Company. After retiring with the rank of major general, he continued the work of his father, Charles Babbage, whom he had assisted as a student. He organised and edited his father's papers and prototypes and arranged for their publication and completion.
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Ada Lovelace. In 1840, Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar in Turin on his analytical engine, [12] the only public explanation he ever gave on the engine. [13] During Babbage's lecture, mathematician Luigi Menabrea wrote an account of the engine in French. [12]
A demo of Babbage's unfinished Difference engine was on display for guests at some of the gatherings. [8] He also displayed a mechanical dancer. [9] In her autobiography, Harriet Martineau describes Babbage's disappointment at his guests being more interested in this dancing doll - a toy - than in his demo of a computing machine.
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine in the Science Museum (London), built on a project led by Doron Swade. Doron Swade MBE, born 1944, is a museum curator and author, specialising in the history of computing. He is especially known for his work on the computer pioneer Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine. [1]
Charles Babbage knew of Jacquard machines and planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical Engine. In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census.