(1)When was the automatic computer invented? In the 1930s or the 1940s? If
you think that, you are only off by a hundred years. A computer that was completely
modern in conception was designed in the 1830s. But, as with the calculators of Pascal and Leibniz, the mechanical technology of the time was not prepared to realize
the conception.
(2)Charles Babbage. The inventor of that nineteenth-century computer was a
figure far more common in fiction than in real life — aneccentric mathematician.
Most mathematicians live personal lives
not too much different from anyone else's. They just happen to do mathematics instead of driving trucks or running stores or filling teeth. But Charles Babbage was the
exception.
(3)For instance, all his life, Babbage waged a vigorous campaign against London organ grinders. He blamed the noise they made for the loss of a quarter of his
working power. Nor was Babbage satisfied with writing anti-organ-grinder letters to
newspapers and members of Parliament. He personally hauled individual offenders
be fore magistrates (and became furious when the magistrates declined to throw the
offenders in jail).
(4)Or consider this. Babbage took issue with Tennyson's poem "Vision of Sin,"
which contains this couplet;
Every minute dies a man,
Every minute one is born.
Babbage pointed out (correctly) that if this were true, the population of the earth
would remain constant. In a letter to the poet, Babbage suggested a revision:
Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.
Babbage emphasized that one and a sixteenth was not exact, but he thought that
it would be "good enough for poetry."
(5)Yet, despite his eccentricities, Babbage was a genius. He was a prolific inventor, whose inventions include the ophthalmoscope for examining the retina of the
eye, the skeleton key, the locomotive "cow catcher," and the speedometer. He also
pioneered operations research, the science of how to carry out business and industrial
operations as efficiently as possible.
(6)Babbage was a fellow of the Royal Society and held the chair of Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (the same chair once held by
Isaac Newton, the most famous British scientist).
(7)The Difference Engine, The mathematical tables of the nineteenth century
were full of mistakes. Even when the tables had been calculated correctly, printers'
errors introduced many mistakes. And since people who published new tables often
copied from existing ones, the same errors cropped up in table after table.45
(8)According to one story, Babbage was lamenting about the errors in some tables to his friend Herschel, a noted astronomer. "I wish to God these calculations had
been executed by steam." Babbage said. "It is quite possible," Herschel responded.
(9)(At that time, steam was a new and largely unexplored source of energy. Just
as we might wonder today whether or not something could be done by electricity, in
the early nineteenth century it was natural to wonder whether or not it could be done
by steam.)
(10) Babbage set out to build a machine that not only would calculate the entries
in the tables but would print them automatically as well. He called this machine the
Difference Engine, since it worked by solving what mathematicians call "difference
equations." Nevertheless, the name is misleading, since the machine constructed tables by means of repeated additions, not subtractions.
(11)(The word engine, by the way, comes from the same root as ingenious.
Originally it referred to a clever invention. Only later did it come to mean a source of
power.)
(12)In 1823, Babbage obtained a government grant to build the Difference Engine. He ran into difficulties, however, and eventually abandoned the project. In
1854, a Swedish printer built a working Difference Engine based on Babbage's ideas.
(13)The Analytical Engine. One of Babbage's reasons for abandoning the Difference Engine was that he had been struck by a much better idea. Inspired by Jacquard's punched-card-controlled loom,
Babbage wanted to build a punched-card-controlled calculator. Babbage called his
proposed automatic calculator the Analytical Engine.
(14)The Difference Engine could only compute tables (and only those tables that
could be computed by successive additions). But the Analytical Engine could carry
out any calculation, just as Jacquard's loom could weave any pattern. All one had to
do was to punch the cards with the instructions for the desired calculation. If the Analytical Engine had been completed, it would have been a nineteenth-century computer.
(15)But, alas, the Analytical Engine was not completed. The govern ment had already sunk thousands of pounds into the Difference Engine and received nothing in
return. It had no intention of repeating its mistake. Nor did Babbage's eccentricities
and abrasive personality help his cause any.
(16)The government may have been right. Even if it had financed the new invention, it might well have gotten nothing in return. For, as usual, the idea was far ahead
of what the existing mechanical technology could build.
(17)This was particularly true since Babbage's design was grandiose. For instance, he planned for his machine to do calculations with fifty-digit accuracy. This is
far greater than the accuracy found in
most modern computers and far more than is needed for most calculations.
(18)Also, Babbage kept changing his plans in the middle of his projects so that
all the work had to be started anew. Although Babbage had founded operations research, he had trouble planning the development of his own inventions.
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(19) Babbage's contemporaries would have considered him more successful had
he stuck to his original plan and constructed the Difference Engine. But then he
would only have earned a footnote in history. It is for the Analytical Engine he never
completed that we honor him as "father of the computer."
(20)Lady Lovelace. Even though the Analytical Engine was never completed, a
demonstration program for it was written. The author of that program has the honor
of being the world's first computer
programmer. Her name was Augusta Ada Byron, later Countess of Lovelace, the only
legitimate daughter of the poet, Lord Byron.
(21)Ada was a liberated woman at a time when this was hardly fashionable. Not
only did she have the usual accomplishments in language and music, she was also an
excellent mathematician. The latter was most unusual for a young lady in the nineteenth century. (She was also fond of horse racing, which was even more unusual.)
(22)Ada's mathematical abilities became apparent when she was only fifteen.
She studied mathematics with one of the most well known mathematicians of her
time, Augustus de Morgan. At about the
time she was studying under de Morgan, she became interested in Babbage's Analytical Engine.
(23)In 1842, Lady Lovelace discovered a paper on the Analytical Engine that
had been written in French by an Italian engineer. She resolved to translate the paper
into English. At Babbage's suggestion, she added her own notes, which turned out to
be twice as long as the paper itself. Much of what we know today about the
Analytical Engine comes from Lady Lovelace's notes.
(24)To demonstrate how the Analytical Engine would work, Lady Love lace included in her notes a program for calculating a certain series of numbers that is of interest to mathematicians. This was the world's first computer program. "We may say
more aptly, Lady Lovelace wrote, "that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical
patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves." Most aptly said indeed!