Over a hundred years ago, Charles Babbage foresaw the power of mechanical computing with his ambitious designs for the ...

In autumn of 1840, Charles Babbage arrived in Turin for a meeting of Italian scientists, where he gave the only public explanation of the workings of his “Analytical Engine.” This machine was the ...

A model of a part of the Analytical Engine built by Charles Babbage, as displayed at the Science Museum in London.Wikimedia Commons Yesterday marked the anniversary of the 1871 death of Charles ...

Can you say "Yowza!" when discussing Victorian England? Let's hope so, because Sydney Padua's new book is definitely "Yowza!" material. Considering that its subject is math — math and the history of ...

Created by Charles Babbage, the Analytical Engine was a general-purpose, completely program-controlled, mechanical digital computer with no human intervention. It was designed to be programmed using ...

This article was taken from the May 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by ...

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine was never completed, but that’s not really the point. It was the idea: a machine capable of computing anything that could possibly be computed. That’s more or less ...

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 ...

Modern computing is often effortless. You pick up a calculator or open the calculator app on your phone, and you’re on your way in seconds. But getting here took humans several centuries from when ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. In 1840, the English mathematician ...