Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

Image Credit

http://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co62245/babbages-analytical-engine-1834-1871-trial-model-analytical-engines

A British scientist called Charles Babbage designed the Analytical engine.He started developing it in 1834 and the trial model first came out in 1871, in the same year Babbage died. Although never completed, it was a major advance in computing because it embedded the principles of the stored program computer.The Analytical Engine was not only automatic but also used for general purposes i.e. it could be ‘programmed’ by the user to execute a range of instructions in any required

order.

The designs for the Analytical Engine include almost all the essential logical features of a modern electronic digital computer.

The engine was programmable using punched cards. Do you know what punched cards are? Punched cards are the cards that have a ‘store’ where numbers and intermediate results could be held in a separate ‘mill’ where the arithmetic processing was performed. The separation of the ‘store’ (memory) and ‘mill’ (central processor) is a fundamental feature of the internal organization of modern computers. (In the next section we will discuss about Census and Punch Cards in greater detail.)

The Analytical Engine could have `looped’ (repeated the same sequence of operations a predetermined number of times) and was capable of conditional branching (IF…THEN… statements) i.e. automatically take alternative courses of action depending on the result of a calculation.

Other than this analytical engine, a programmable calculator was designed by Charles Babbage. The Difference engine that was invented before the analytical engine, is also a design of Babbage’s.