Talk:Analytical engine

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[edit] Was the analytical engine ever built?

The history of computers page says that the analytical engine was never built, this page at least implies that it was. Which is correct? .charles Babbage

It was never built. His son built a part of it (arithmetical unit and printer) which the most important control unit which would make it programmable. I'll clarify that. --AxelBoldt
As far as I understand, his son build a 4-function calculator with printer by his own design (derived from Babbage's mill). And Babbage did build part of the mill including the printer, but this is a different machine. The latter can be recognized as having many horizontal racks in it and several cam wheels in front of it.SvenPB 14:43, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

This page states that the analytical engine was a hundred years ahead of comperable...computers. Were there other computer at the time of the analytical engine? Or was it the technological equivalent of computers that would be built a century later? --rmhermen

There were no other computers at the time. The first comparable ones appeared 100 years later. --AxelBoldt
The key to Babbage's idea was to seperate calculation and memory. This was only reinvented a century later. In Babbage's time non-programmable calculators were build. Schickard's and Leibniz' machines could multiply. Schickard used the principle of Napier's bones. Leibniz used the principle of the stepped drum. And Schultz actually build a difference machine in Babbage's time. Babbage and Schultz have also met. Schultz' machine looks ok, but as I understand it was not very well thought out and didn't work very well (for example the position of the wheels wasn't defined. Babbage's used springs for that. In general Babbage's machines are not matched by any other design from a mechanical point of view).SvenPB 14:38, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

100 years after 1837 (first description) or 1871 (death)? Are you referring to Zuse? --Yooden


[edit] Mechanical Drawings

Does anyone know where I might find plans of either engine?

BrentB

Plans which would be useful to a machinist are non-existant. The site linked in the article provides sufficient detail for designing a new machine that functions under the principles of the Analytical and Difference engines. The Science Museum in London, England currently has in it's archives the design sketches which Babbage produced within his lifetime. These are substantially complement, however they only provide a description of the parts and their relationships. These would need to be translated into dimensioned drawings to fabricate actual parts. A difficult process, but one which is very doable, and one that I am attempting to perform at the moment. Still figuring out how to talk to the museum's archive department and obtain full-scale reproductions of the necessary docs. -- wackyvorlon

I wonder if they ever will become available online or in print. Maybe Google will scan them. I know many professional drawings have been made of the machines and also thousands of pages of sketches are in existence. Though, as wackyvorlon remarks, they can not be translated to metal directly.SvenPB 14:28, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ada Byron's involvement.

I removed the following sentence from the start of the Design paragraph "ada byron was the real inventer. ". It is unsourced, not formatted and clearly (to me) spam. If anyone can prove otherwise, find a source and feel free to stick the sentence back in. Spacerat3004 19:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

You are exactly right - Ada had nothing to do with the design of the machine. Her involvement was mostly in translating and adding clarifying notes about the machine. Her main innovation (and there is some debate about whether even that was hers) was on the software side of things. Her notes describe things that modern programmers would recognise as loops, subroutines and libraries - and as far as we know, she was the first person ever to write about such things. So certainly it is wildly incorrect to say that Ada was the real inventor of the Analytical engine - it might be correct to say that she is the inventor of many of the constructs of modern programming languages - but even that is a matter of some debate. I really feel for Ada - she must have been the most frustrated programmer in history! Having all of those great ideas for how to program a computer - but no computer to actually run them on! SteveBaker 20:34, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
The statement was part of vandalism by an IP (see here). You should have just reverted to the previous version. I have now restored the deleted content. -- Petri Krohn 05:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Negative

This is a very negative article, which fails to reflect the problems that Babbage would have found himself up against. Chasnor15 (talk) 16:59, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

...such as...? What? SteveBaker (talk) 03:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)