Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine #2

[Recorded: April 2008]
Charles Babbage (1791-1871), computer pioneer, designed the first automatic computing engines. He invented computers but failed to build them. The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8,000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long.

OVERVIEW -
In London, during the summer of 1821, Charles Babbage, inventor and mathematician, is poring over a set of astronomical tables calculated by hand. Finding error after error he finally exclaims 'I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam'. His appeal to machinery, in one of the most resonant utterances of the 19th century, was the start of a new era of automatic computation.
It was not only the grindingly tedious labor of verifying a sea of figures that exasperated Babbage, but their daunting unreliability. Engineering, astronomy, construction, finance, banking and insurance depended on printed tables for calculation. Ships navigating by the stars relied on printed tables to find their position at sea. The stakes were high. Capital and life were thought to be at risk.
Babbage embarked on an ambitious venture to design and build mechanical calculating engines to eliminate the risk of human error in the production of printed tables. The 'unerring certainty of machinery' would solve the problem of human fallibility. His work on the engines led him from mechanized arithmetic to the entirely new realm of automatic computation. Tabular errors provided a practical stimulus. But this was not his only motive. He also saw his engines as a new technology of mathematics.
Babbage himself failed to build a complete calculating engine and his designs remained an historical curiosity for over 150 years.

Finally, in 2002, the first full-size Babbage Engine (Difference Engine No. 2), built faithfully to the original designs, was completed at the Science Museum in London, the culmination of a seventeen year project. The Engine consists of 8,000 parts, weighs 5 tons and measures eleven feet long and seven feet high. It works as Babbage intended, and brings to a close an anguished chapter in the prehistory of computing.

A MODERN SEQUEL -
A duplicate engine is on display and demonstrated at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It is a sumptuous piece of engineering sculpture and an arresting sight in operation. This video is from that exhibit. Learn more about Charles Babbage, his Difference Engine #2 and the exhibit by visiting: WWW.COMPUTERHISTORY.ORG/BABBAGE

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Computer
• History
• Babbage
• Difference
• Engine
• Calculator

[IraqMesopotamia]

He said (after he dead by his son) what does that means .... Is his son killed him ?

[ComputerHistory]

@IraqMesopotamia Thanks for your question. Charles Babbage's son, Henry Prevost, didn't kill him. His son lived on after Charles Babbage died and tried to continue some of his work on mechanical computing engines.

[ypsidixit]

Just out of curiosity, how in the world do you ship a five-ton Difference Engine? Is it disassembled?

[ComputerHistory]

The engine was shipped from London to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California almost completely assembled. A custom designed frame was built for the Engine within a standard cargo shipping container. Some additional bracing was added and the Engine was shipped by air to avoid the long transit time and movement of a cargo ship. The Engine arrived with no damage though some parts needed to be cleaned due to the extreme changes in temperature and humidity during shipping.

[MrMalavon]

He was way ahead of his time.

[wvdirtboy]

Absolutely amazing.

[SailorBarsoom]

Several people have compared this to DNA. That's what I thought of too. But the amazing thing is that DNA wasn't discovered until 1878, and its structure wasn't discovered until 1953 (one of the scientists, Francis Crick, credited LSD with helping him to visualize it).

Babbage was truly a man ahead of his time, and one can't help but wonder what the world today would be like if this machine, and his analytical engine, had both been built, say by 1850.

[SailorBarsoom]

@slackertwentytwo

Apparently not, but the analytical engine, had it been built, would have been.

[iLOVENATURE2011]

charles babbage....the father of computer. That's what my grade school teacher taught me. Great mind.

[andrew8833]

@cyberteque he got his funding from the government here in Britain but he had a few personality clashes and due to him wasting time he lost funding.

[cyberteque]

@andrew8833 Not enigma.

Babbage got his funding from the Admiralty.

Typo's were sinking ships and costing money.

[andrew8833]

@ComputerHistory Slight correction he did not finish what he created with the difference machine he kept changing it for one reason or another.

2 where finished off in Britain to his original designs and then one was quite rightly shipped as you put it to CA in the US, the other remains in Oxford.

[andrew8833]

@cyberteque You mean the enigma machine? That was developed actually in Poland I think, definately was not us Brits that created that!

But was given to use by some other European country anyways and Churchill ordered that it be kept under wraps to not let the Nazi's know about it's creation that we managed to decrypt their communication encryption, where SSL in computing originates from somewhat.

[andrew8833]

@MrMalavon The problem with Babbage was he kept changing and improving it and never really finished what he'd created.

[johnas1011]

Genius, and very beautiful

[xoio]

@MrMalavon He was about 100 years ahead of his time...