Innovation stems from the minds of individuals who recognize a need and strive to develop a new way to fill it. One such innovation was the difference engine, an automatic mechanical calculator ...

Difference Engine A numerical table is a tool designed to save the time and labor of those engaged in computing work. The oldest tables which are preserved, were compiled in Babylon in the period ...

Nearly a century and a half ago, the Difference Engine did much the same work, but slowly and mechanically. Two Swedes, Georg Scheutz and his son, Edvard, built the Smithsonian's machine in 1853.

Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, designed in the 1820s, is considered the first "mechanical" computer in history, according to the Science Museum in the U.K.

Sure, you could go back to the 1820s and point to Charles Babbage's Difference Engine as the thing that started it all, but this pictorial timeline gives you a pretty definitive walkthrough of the ...

This photo depicts a section of the "Difference Engine," a mechanical calculator designed by Charles Babbage between 1823 and 1842, which many consider the first computer. ... Computer History ...

A HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER: PREHISTORY. The abacus, a simple counting aid, may have been invented in Babylonia ... Charles Babbage conceives of a "Difference Engine" in 1820 or 1821.

Today, two difference engines exist, one in Babbage’s London and the other at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It’s difficult to grasp the scale of the giant machine ...

Not too many people go to science museums and place orders, but former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold was apparently so impressed with the London Science Museum's replica of Charles Babbage's ...

Nathan Myhrvold has long held an abiding affection for old technology. The former chief technology officer of Microsoft owns a hunk of the ENIAC, the first large-scale, general-purpose electronic ...