Charles Babbage

The Charles Babbage connection

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) was a prolific English scientist with a huge range of interests. Many biographies are available and two are provided as links below. Twice he worked on calculating machines.

By 1822 he had completed a design for his Difference Engine - a powerful automatic mechanical calculator with its own formatting printer.
By 1870 he had a reasonably consistant set of plans for his very complex Analytical Engine - an automatic, programmable calculator. This would have been easy to distinguish from a modern computer by the steam engine required to run it. Even in a mechanical embodiment the programming concepts were right up to today.

He never completed his "Engines", but he did show that a programmable calculating device was conceivable. Virtually all the early computer builders knew of, and referred to his work. His descendants moved to Australia and NZ, with a demonstration unit of the Difference Engine, which the Powerhouse museum purchased.

Demonstration model of the Difference Engine mechanism at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum, Ultimo, in 1996. Present: Prof. Allan Bromley & Matthew Connell.
Photo by Max Burnet

Allan Bromley

Professor Bromley was the world authority on Babbage's engines and he was involved in this purchase as well as being advisor to the British Science Museum on the first completed construction of the Difference Engine in 1991. He retired from the University of Sydney in 2001 and he was a president of the ACMS.

Matthew Connell

Powerhouse Museum Information Technology Curator and ACMS member.

- John Deane