The Babbage Engine

7/26/2019 The Babbage Engine

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The Babbage Engine


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Charles Babbage, computer pioneer, designed the frstautomatic computing engines.

He invented computers but couldnt build them due tointricacies and expenses.

The Babbage Engine was completed in London in !!,"#$ %ears later, a&ter it was designed b% Babbage an

Lovelace.

'i(erence Engine )o. , built to the original drawings,is built up o& *,!!! parts, weighs fve tons, and is ""&eet long.


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This is the Babbage engine


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+hat could it do

The -nal%tical Engine incorporated an

arithmetic logic unit, control ow in the &ormo& conditional branching and loops, andintegrated memor%, ma/ing it the frst design&or a general0purpose computer that could bedescribed in modern terms as Turing0

complete.

1n other words, the logical structure o& the-nal%tical Engine was essentiall% the same asthat which has dominated computer design in

the electronic era.


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How it wor/ed

The input 2programs and data3 was to be

given to the machine through punched cards,a method being used at the time to directmechanical looms such as the 4ac5uard loom.6or output, the machine would have a printer,

a curve plotter and a bell.The machine would also be able to punchnumbers onto cards to be read in later. 1t usedordinar% base0"! fxed0point arithmetic.


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There was a memor% storage capable o&holding ",!!! numbers o& 7! decimal digitseach.

-n arithmetical unit 2the 8mill83 would be ableto per&orm all &our arithmetic operations withcomparisons and optionall% s5uare roots.

it was conceived as a di(erence engine curvedbac/ onto itsel&, in a generall% circular la%out,with the long store coming out to one side.

Li/e the C9: in a modern computer, the mill

would rel% upon its own internal procedures,to be stored in the &orm o& pegs inserted intorotating drums called 8barrels8, to carr% outsome o& the more complex instructions theuser;s program might speci&%.

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The Babbage Engine