The first device of computing
An English mechanical engineer, named Charles Babbage who did polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "Father of the Computer", he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his revolutionary difference engine, designed to aid in navigational calculations.In 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an Analytical Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom.
For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a
bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be
read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.
The machine was about a century ahead of its time because all the parts for
his machine had to be made by hand — this was a major problem for a
device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved
with the decision of the British Government
to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine
can be chiefly attributed to difficulties not only of politics and
financing, but also to his desire to develop an increasingly
sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could
follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified
version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.
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