- Plan to finally build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine
- The design predated the birth of computers by 100 years
By Damien Gayle
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A campaign has been launched to finally build what could be the first computer ever envisaged - which was designed over a century and a half ago.
Charles Babbage's 'Analytical Engine', conceived of in 1837 - 100 years before Alan Turing's work launched the computer age - would have been the size of a small locomotive, built from brass and iron, and powered by steam.
It would have included a central processing unit, which he called 'the mill', expandable memory, known as 'the store', and would have been programmable by punched cards.
Complicated: One of the 250 drawings drafted by British mathematician Charles Babbage detailing the design of his Analytical Engine - a vast progenitor to computers conceived of in 1837 but never built
The mathematician wrote thousands of pages of notes and drafted 250 drawings detailing the mechanism, but a lack of funding meant it never even got close to being built.
While parts of the machine have since been constructed for display and demonstration purposes, the machine has never been realised in its entirety.
A UK-based campaign is now hoping to change all that by raising the cash to finally build Babbage's Analytical Engine using the same tools and processes craftsmen would have used when he was alive.
Dubbed Plan 28 - after the most complete design left by Babbage - it hopes to raise £250,000 for the first two stages of a project expected to span two or three years.
John Graham-Cumming, author of the Geek Atlas and director of the project, told the BBC that Babbage's Analytical Engine was an 'inspirational piece of equipment'.
'A hundred years ago, before computers were available, [Babbage] had envisaged this machine,' he said.
Engineering: A part of the Analytic Engine built for demonstration purposes which sits in London's Science Museum
Inside the Analytical Engine's CPU - 'the mill' - operations were controlled by a microprogram stored on cylinders covered in studs, Mr Graham-Cumming explained in an article for O'Reilly Radar.
In his plans, Babbage outlined an engine with 100 storage locations each capable of holding 40 decimal digits - roughly equivalent to 1.7kb - and even anticipated the need for external storage using punched cards.
The machine's programming language included loops and conditionals - 100 years before Turing's 1936 paper rediscovered the process to enable the beginning of the computer age in the U.S. and UK.
Technical: The finished engine would have included a central processing unit, memory and would have been programmable by punched card
Babbage even anticipated the impact of his machine, notes Mr Graham-Cumming, when he wrote in his notes: 'As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science.'
The Analytical Engine was the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a huge brass number cruncher that was rebuilt by team from London's Science Museum in the late Eighties.
But while the Analytical Engine was equivalent to modern day calculators, the Analytical Engine's more advanced architecture and capacity for more general use marks it out as a computer in the modern day sense of the word.
Plan 28's technical director, Doron Swade, told Forbes it was the 'first design to embody just about every logical principle of the modern digital computer, but using cogs and levers. We can’t wait to see if it works.'
Although much of Babbage's work was supported by the British government, as costs rose and years wore on, the government was advised that the machines would be of little use and eventually ceased funding.
The mathematician nevertheless soldiered on alone, leaving reams of notes from which Plan 28 hope to construct their version of the contraption.
'Just think of the impact of the computer and ask yourself how different the Victorian world would have been with Babbage Engines at its disposal'
Plan 28 hopes first to decide what constitutes an Analytical Engine, a step made necessary because Babbage continually refined his designs, leaving behind a huge collection of plans and notebooks.
Once that is achieved, the next step of the project is to use 3D modelling software to build a virtual working model of Babbage's machine.
This is essential given the huge size and complexity of the analytical engine and would hopefully prove that Babbage's plans worked in real life. Only then will they undertake the task of actually building the machine.
Mr Graham-Cummings writes: 'It might seem a folly to want to build a gigantic, relatively puny computer at great expense 170 years after its invention. But the message of a completed Analytical Engine is very clear: it’s possible to be 100 years ahead of your own time.
'Just think of the impact of the computer and ask yourself how different the Victorian world would have been with Babbage Engines at its disposal.
'I hope that future generations of scientists will stand before the completed Analytical Engine, think of Babbage, and be inspired to work on their own 100-year leaps.'
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