THE FATHER OF COMPUTER: CHARLES BABBAGE

image:Father of computer
Charles Babbage was in born in Walworth on 26 December, 1791. He attended Cambridge University in 1810 to study mathematics and graduated without honors from Peterhouse in 1814, after it, he received MA degree in 1817. After getting graduation he got marry with Georgiana Whitmore with whom he had eight children, three of whom lived to adulthood, the couple from them made their home in London off Portland Place in the year 1815. His Wife, father and two of his children died in year 1827. In 1828 Babbage decided to move Marylebon, which remained his home till his death on 18th October 1871. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in year 1816 and he was also the Lucasian chair of mathematics at the Cambridge University, England from 1828 to 1839. He was also a mathematician, philosopher and mechanical engineer, Babbage is best remembering for originating the concept of a programmable computer.

In 1812, Babbage realized that many lengthy calculations, especially those who needed to make mathematical tables, were really a chain of predictable actions that were constantly repeated. From this he supposed that it should be possible to do these automatically. He started to design an automatic mechanical calculating machine, which he named a difference engine. By 1822, he had working model to demonstrate with. With the financial help from the British government, Babbage started fabrication of a difference machine in year 1823. It was intended to be steam powered and fully automatic, including the printing of the resulting tables, and commanded by a fixed instruction program.

The difference machine, although adaptability and limited applicability, was in reality great progress. Babbage continued to work on it for the next 10 years, but in 1833 he lost interest because he thought he had a better idea the structure of what today would be a general objective, fully controlled by program, automatic mechanical digital computer. Babbage named this idea an analytical Engine. The ideas of this design showed a lot of foresight, although this could not be appreciated until a full century later.

The plans for this great engine required an identical decimal computer operating on numbers of 50 decimal digits (or words) and having a storage capability (memory) of 1,000 such digits. The built-in operations were supposed to include everything that a modern general purpose computer would need, even the all important Conditional Control Transfer Capability that would allow commands to be executed in any order, not just the order in which they were programmed.The analytical engine was soon to use punched cards (similar to those used in a Jacquard loom), which would be read into the machine from several different Reading Stations. The machine was supposed to operate automatically, by steam power, and require only one person there.

The computer of Babbage was never finished. A lot of reasons are used for his failure. Most used is the lack of accuracy machining techniques at the time. Another assumption is that Babbage was working to find a solution of a problem that few people in year 1840 really needed to solve. After Babbage, there was a little bit loss of interest in automatic digital computers.

Between 1850 and 1900 most great advances were made in mathematical physics, and it came to be known as most observable dynamic phenomena can be recognized by differential equations (which meant that the most events occurring in nature can be measured or explained in one equation or another), so that easy it means for their calculation would be helpful.

Furthermore, from a practical view, the availability of steam power caused manufacturing (boilers), transportation (steam engines and boats), and commerce to prosper and led to a period of lots of engineering achievements. The designing of railroads and making of steamships, textile mills, and bridges required differential calculus to find out such things as:

·         center of gravity
·         center of buoyancy
·         moment of inertia
·         stress distributions

Even the assessment of the power output of a steam engine needed mathematical integration. A strong need thus developed for a machine that could rapidly perform many repetitive calculations.

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