2010-06-26 18:23:37
Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was born into a world where all mathematical calculations were done by hand. As soon as the operations required results with a precision of few digits, the scientists, bankers, navigators and engineers made use of a set of mathematical tables that avoided tedious intermediate calculations. There were tables of logarithms, tables of trigonometric functions, astronomical tables, tables of financial interests, etc. The elaboration of these tables was complicated and errors, both in calculation and transcription, abounded. In 1834, a popularizer of science named Lardner randomly selected data from 40 volumes of mathematical tables and discovered 3,700 misprints, some of which contained errors.
Babbage, who continually used mathematical tables for his calculations and designs, was carried away by demons every time he found an error, and he found many. He began to dream of a mechanical computer capable of not only calculating correctly but printing the results to avoid transcription errors.
In 1822, Babbage built an experimental model of his calculating machine which he called the “difference engine” or “difference machine”, so called because it used a mathematical method that allows the result to be approximated exclusively by sums. The model encouraged the researcher to design and build a large-scale machine.
The scientist invested more than 10 years in the design of his machine. The size and complexity were enormous, its more than 25,000 pieces, once assembled, would form an artifact that was two meters high and would pass several tons. Adding to the difficulties of construction was the obsessive perfectionism of Babbage, who did not stop introducing modifications to the design. Excessive spending and opposition from some scientists killed the project.
Babbage did not give up, on the contrary, he began working on an even more ambitious project which he called the “Analytical Engine”. The jump between one idea and another was impressive, more than a calculator, the analytical engine was a computer that contained the basic concepts of a modern computer: it could add, subtract, multiply and divide, it was programmable and contained the rudiments of memory and the processor of current computers. The analytical engine could choose between different calculation strategies and the results could be printed. Unfortunately, demoralized after the failure of his difference engine, Babbage did not even try to build his analytical engine.
However, Babbage’s work on his Analytical Engine served to greatly improve his first project. This is how his “Difference Machine No. 2” was born. The new calculator was much more efficient, handled 31-digit numbers with precision (10 more than the first) and contained only a third of the pieces. He painstakingly drew all the parts of the machine between 1847 and 1849 but could not get the funding to build it.
Babbage’s sketches slept the sleep of the just for 135 years in the Science Museum Library in London. In 1985, a researcher from the University of Sydney in Australia named Allan G. Bromley, visiting London, examined Babbage’s sketches and became convinced that Difference Machine No. 2 could be built.
The project lasted six years, all the sketches had to be reviewed one by one and some errors were corrected (the authors of the project suspect that they were put on purpose by its inventor to confuse possible industrial spies). Finally, in 1991, two hundred years after Babbage’s birth, the “Difference Machine No. 2” made its first tight calculations, demonstrating to the world the extraordinary vision of a meticulous inventor, eccentric visionary and brilliant scientist: Charles Babbage.
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