Charles Babbage

Title: Inventions That Changed the World

Author: David Maule

This true story is about the person who invented the first computer. I could not have chosen a better picture then this, because it’s seems like Charles Babbage was very happy and confident looking with his machine.

In 1822, in England, Charles Babbage (1792 - 1871) began work on a counting machine. British government to award him £1500 in funding and worked on it for the next ten years. This became known as the Difference Engine Number one, after that Babbage asked the government for money to make new machine, but public funding was withdrawn. He then built the Difference Engine Number two at two meters high, this was slightly smaller and much simple model that used only small number of the 25,000 parts in the first machine.

Unfortunately, a working model of the Difference Engine proved considerably more difficult to build than a desktop prototype in the end, Babbage was forced to walk away from his brainchild, but he had planned the first programmable computer. This included programs (written using cards with holes in them), a reader which was able to get results from the information, and a memory all the things that were found in later computers.

In 1991, one hundred years after Babbage’s death, a copy was built using his plans but very few people knew about his work and most of them weren’t interested. Now that hundreds of thousands of electronic parts can be put together on a board that is no more than one centimeter square. The ability of computers to do difficult mathematics and the power of the Internet to help people communicate easily, also each other have made it possible to improve ideas much faster than before. Computers have helped all the more recent inventions, which means that Babbage was one of the most important people in the history of computers.