Charles Babbage 1792-1871

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Charles Babbage 1792-1871
Invented the first computer (depending on what
you consider a computer to be).
On two occasions I have been asked by members of
Parliament, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into
the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the
kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke
such a question. -- Charles Babbage,
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• Was socially responsible
• Thought the voting process would be more
  reputable and honest if you didnt use people.
• Build a simple working version of the difference
  engine because he had skills as a technician (and
  smarts).
• But gave up / ran out of money and decided to to
  create the Analytic engine, which would have used
  a punch card system, had it ever been build.
• Was eventually created and proven to work.
• Invented the Cow catcher!
• Street musicians played at his funeral

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Difference Engine
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If the Analytical Engine had been built, it would
have been in many ways more advanced than some of
the first computers that emerged in the 1940s. It
would have been digital, programmable and Turing
complete. However, it would have been very slow.
Ada Lovelace reported in her notes on the
Analytical engine "Mr. Babbage believes he can,
by his engine, form the product of two numbers,
each containing twenty figures, in three
minutes". By comparison the Harvard Mark I could
perform the same task in just six seconds. A
modern PC can do the same thing in well under a
billionth of a second.
Being equivalent to the universal Turing machine
essentially means being able to perform any
computational taskthough it does not mean being
able to perform such tasks efficiently, quickly,
or easily. The term derives from the name of
mathematician Alan Turing who introduced the
model of the universal Turing machine.
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Ada Lovelace
First programmer ever (computed the Bernoulli
numbers) for the Analytic Engine (which was
never built). Daughter of Lord Byron.