150-Year-Old Computer Brought to Life

Charles Babbage--Father of Computing
Born December 26, 1791 in Teignmouth, Devonshire UK (See map below) is known as the "Father of Computing" for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his Analytical machine. His previous Difference Engine was a special purpose device intended for the production of tables.

While he did produce prototypes of portions of the Difference Engine, it was left to Georg and Edvard Schuetz to construct the first working devices to the same design which were successful in limited applications.


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Significant Events in His Life
1791: Born;
1810: Entered Trinity College, Cambridge;
1814: graduated Peterhouse;
1817 received MA from Cambridge;
1820: founded the Analytical Society with Herschel and Peacock;
1823: started work on the Difference Engine through funding from the British Government;
1827: published a table of logarithms from 1 to 108000;
1828: appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (never presented a lecture);
1831: founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science;
1832: published "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery";
1833: began work on the Analytical Engine;
1834: founded the Statistical Society of London;
1864: published Passages from the Life of a Philosopher;
1871: Passed Away.

A Silicon Valley museum brings inventor, philosopher and alleged music hater Charles Babbage's computing contraption to life

Designed nearly 150 years ago but never actually built until recently, the Difference Engine No. 2 designed by Charles Babbage (1791 to 1871) is a piece of Victorian technology meant to tussle with logarithms and trigonometry long before the first modern computer. Technophiles have a rare opportunity beginning May 10 to see one of these devices (only two exist) on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.


Babbage's automatic computing engine consists of 8,000 bronze, cast iron and steel parts, weighs five tons, and measures eleven feet (3.4 meters) long and seven feet (2.1 meters) high. Museum guest curator Doron Swade used Babbage's own plans to bring the engine to life.


Babbage is also credited with inventing the cowcatcher, dynamometer, standard railroad gauge and heliograph ophthalmoscope as well as uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses and Greenwich time signals.

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE
Exhibited for the first time in North America, this is one of only two Babbage Difference Engine No. 2 devices ever built.


Charles Babbage's Difference Engine
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, designed in the late 1840s, weighs five tons, is 11 feet (3.4 meters) long and seven feet (2.1 meters) high, and has 8,000 bronze, cast iron and steel parts. The Computer History Museum's Babbage Engine Exhibit launches on May 10, 2008, in Mountain View, Calif.


Blue Print
Babbage's Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers, and one of the design drawings from which Doron Swade, director of the Babbage exhibit at the Computer History Museum, masterminded the construction of the Difference Engines at the Science Museum in London.


Carry the 10
Section of the backside of Difference Engine No. 2 showing a portion of the mechanism for carrying tens.

Chapter Wheel
The engine's "chapter wheel," cranked by hand, calculates polynomial functions to 31 decimal places producing one result for each of the engine's cycles. The chapter wheel shows the subdivisions of the cycle.

IT Figures
Part of one of eight columns of figure wheels. There are a total of 248 similar interlocking wheels in Difference Engine No. 2.

Printing Process

The engine's printing apparatus automatically typesets, prints and stereotypes results.


Exclusive Collection
Exhibited for the first time in North America, this is one of only two Babbage Difference Engine No. 2 devices ever built.