Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff. From How Stuff Works Pay Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Volga bam 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 Outred
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 to
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. Monapart 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Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, Babbage visited Paris and viewed the unpublished manuscript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 engine 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 difference engine,
Speaker 1: which worked on the principle of finite differences, or making
Speaker 1: complex mathematical calculations by repeated addition 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 table making machine, only
Speaker 1: to find his funding had run out. Some people might
Speaker 1: have 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: Jacard Loom, which was a weaving machine developed in eighteen
Speaker 1: o 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 a genius
Speaker 1: behind the Analytical Engine, then Augusta Ada Byron or Ada
Speaker 1: Lovelace was its publicist and arguably the very first computer programmer.
Speaker 1: She met Babbage at a party when she was seventeen
Speaker 1: and became fascinated by the idea of the analytical Engine.
Speaker 1: From that chance meeting grew a strong dynamic relationship. Lovelace
Speaker 1: was gifted in mathematics and offered Babbage numerous insights. In
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three, she published an influential set of notes
Speaker 1: describing the Analytical Engine. She also added in some stage predictions,
Speaker 1: calculating that Babbage's mechanical computers might one day act upon
Speaker 1: other things besides numbers, and even compose elaborate and scientific
Speaker 1: pieces of music of any degree of complexity. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: technology of the day could not deliver on their ambitious designs.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen that their particular ideas were finally
Speaker 1: translated into a functioning computer. That's when the Science Museum
Speaker 1: in London built to Babbage's exact specifications a Difference Engine.
Speaker 1: It stands eleven feet long and seven feet tall that's
Speaker 1: about three meters long and two meters tall, contains eight
Speaker 1: thousand moving parts and ways fifteen tons or just over
Speaker 1: thirteen and a half metric tons. A copy of the
Speaker 1: machine was built and shipped to the Computer History Museum
Speaker 1: in Mountain View, California, where it remained on display until December.
Speaker 1: Neither device would function on a desktop, but they are
Speaker 1: no doubt the first computers and precursors to the modern
Speaker 1: in PC. Today's episode was written by William Harris and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other analytical topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com.