The Analytical Engine was a design by Babbage, Charles in the 1830s following his Difference Engine. It was inspired by the punch-card-based Jacquard Looms. It was never completed, but in concept it is seen as the first programable computer. Lovelace, Ada, long term collaborator with Babbage, identified the special qualities of the Analytical Engine: "The Difference Engine can merely tabulate, and is incapable of developing, the Analytical Engine can either tabulate or develope."
Used in Chap. 1: page 4; Chap. 11: page 147
Links:
blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk: Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine
- collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk:
Babbage's Analytical Engine, 1834-1871. (Trial model)
- fourmilab.ch:
Ada Lovelace – Notes upon the Memoir by the Translator: Sketch of The Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, By L. F. Menabrea, Biblioth\`eque Universelle de Gen\`eve, October, 1842, No. 82
Henry Babbage's analytical engine mill, built in 1910, in the Science Museum (London) (source: Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
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