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.
