As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

Slow, error-prone calculations by hand were unavoidable in the early 19th century, yet even small mistakes could ruin the ...

Charles Babbage 17911871 computer pioneer designed the first automatic computing engines He invented computers but failed to build them The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in ...

Englishman Charles Babbage (1791–1871), an eccentric, ingenious mathematician, decided that existing tables of computations included far too many errors: the day's textbooks came with errata sheets ...