Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is another classic brain Stuff episode.
Speaker 1: In this one, we dig into the history of computers.
Speaker 1: Although the first one was designed in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be built for another one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here, who invented the first computer?
Speaker 1: One could argue that the abacus was the first computer,
Speaker 1: or its descendant, the slide rule, invented by William Ottred
Speaker 1: in sixteen twenty two, but the first computer resembling today's
Speaker 1: modern machines was the Analytical Engine, a device conceived and
Speaker 1: designed by British mathematician Charles Babbage between eighteen thirty three
Speaker 1: and eighteen seventy one. Before Babbage came along, our computers
Speaker 1: were people who sat around all day adding and subtracting
Speaker 1: numbers and entering the results into tables. The tables then
Speaker 1: appeared in books so that other people could use them
Speaker 1: to complete tasks such as launching artillery shells accurately or
Speaker 1: calculating taxes. It was, in fact, a mammoth number crunching
Speaker 1: project that inspired Babbage in the first place. Napoleon Bonaparte
Speaker 1: initiated the project in seventeen ninety when he ordered a
Speaker 1: switch from the old imperial system of measurements to the
Speaker 1: new metric system. For ten years, scores of human computers
Speaker 1: made the necessary conversions and completed the tables. Bonaparte was
Speaker 1: never able to publish the tables, however, and they sat
Speaker 1: collecting dust in the Academy the Sciences in Paris. In
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, Babbage visited Paris and viewed the unpublished manuscript
Speaker 1: with page after page of tables. If only, he wondered,
Speaker 1: there was a way to produce such tables faster, with
Speaker 1: less manpower and fewer mistakes. He thought of the many
Speaker 1: marvels generated by the Industrial Revolution. If creative and hard
Speaker 1: working inventors could develop the cotton gin and the steam locomotive,
Speaker 1: then why not a machine to make calculations. Babbage returned
Speaker 1: to England and decided to build just such a machine.
Speaker 1: His first vision was something he dubbed the different Engine,
Speaker 1: which worked on the principle of finite differences, or making
Speaker 1: complex mathematical calculations by repeated edition without using multiplication or division.
Speaker 1: He secured government funding in eighteen twenty four and spent
Speaker 1: eight years perfecting his idea. In eighteen thirty two, he
Speaker 1: produced a functioning prototype of his tablemaking machine, only to
Speaker 1: find his funding had run out. Some people might have
Speaker 1: been discouraged, but not Babbage. Instead of simplifying his design
Speaker 1: to make the difference engine easier to build, he turned
Speaker 1: his attention to an even grander idea, the analytical Engine,
Speaker 1: a new kind of mechanical computer that could make even
Speaker 1: more complex calculations, including multiplication and division. The basic parts
Speaker 1: of the analytical Engine resemble the components of any computer
Speaker 1: sold on the market today. It featured two hallmarks of
Speaker 1: any modern machine, a central processing unit or CPU, and
Speaker 1: memory a Babbage, of course, didn't use those terms. He
Speaker 1: called the CPU the mill, and the memory the store.
Speaker 1: He also had a device, the reader, to input instructions,
Speaker 1: as well as a way to record on paper results
Speaker 1: generated by the machine. Babbage called this output device a printer,
Speaker 1: which makes perfect sense to me. Babbage's new invention existed
Speaker 1: almost entirely on paper. He kept voluminous notes and sketches
Speaker 1: about his computers, nearly five thousand pages worth, and although
Speaker 1: he never built a single production model of the Analytical Engine.
Speaker 1: He had a clear vision about how the machine would
Speaker 1: look and work, borrowing the same technology used by the
Speaker 1: Jakard Loom, which was a weaving machine developed in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh four that made it possible to create a variety
Speaker 1: of cloth patterns automatically. Babbage's data would be entered on
Speaker 1: punched cards. Up to one thousand, fifty digit numbers could
Speaker 1: be held in the computer's store. Punched cards would also
Speaker 1: carry the instructions which the machine could execute out of
Speaker 1: sequential order. A single attendant would oversee the whole operation,
Speaker 1: but steam would power it, turning cranks, moving cams and rods,
Speaker 1: and spinning gear wheels. But if Babbage was the genius
Speaker 1: behind the Analytical Engine, then A. Gusta Ada Byron or
Speaker 1: Ada Lovelace was its publicist and arguably the very first
Speaker 1: computer programmer. She met Babbage at a party when she
Speaker 1: was seventeen and became fascinated by the idea of the
Speaker 1: analytical Engine. From that chance meeting grew a strong dynamic relationship.
Speaker 1: Lovelace was gifted in mathematics and offered Babbage numerous insights.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty three, she published an influential set of
Speaker 1: notes describing the analytical engine. She also added in some
Speaker 1: sage predictions, calculating that Babbage's mechanical computers might one day
Speaker 1: act upon other things besides numbers, and even compose elaborate
Speaker 1: and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the technology of the day could not deliver on their
Speaker 1: ambitious designs. It wasn't until nineteen ninety one that their
Speaker 1: particular ideas were finally translated into a functioning computer. That's
Speaker 1: when the Science Museum in London built two Babbage's exact specifications,
Speaker 1: a difference Engine. It stands eleven feet long and seven
Speaker 1: feet tall that's about three meters long and two meters tall,
Speaker 1: contains eight thousand moving hearts and weighs fifteen tons or
Speaker 1: just over thirteen and a half metric tons. A copy
Speaker 1: of the machine was built and shipped to the Computer
Speaker 1: History Museum in Mountain View, California, where it remained on
Speaker 1: display until December of twenty ten. Neither device would function
Speaker 1: on a desktop, but they are no doubt the first
Speaker 1: computers and precursors to the modern PC. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article who Invented the First Computer? On HowStuffWorks?
Speaker 1: Dot com written by William Harris and Chris Palette. Brainstep
Speaker 1: is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com.
Speaker 1: It is produced by Tyler Klain. Four more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.