THE April number of the Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society contains an interesting and very original paper by Mr. Percy E. Ludgate on a proposed analytical machine. Of all calculating ...

Timelines of computer history usually take us back to the early 20th century and no further. But believe it or not, a tinkerer named Charles Babbage got close enough to creating the world's first ...

Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Annabella Milbanke, became the world's first programmer in 1843 with her algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Learning to ...

The first programmable computer—if it were built—would have been a gigantic, mechanical thing clunking along with gears and levers and punch cards. That was the vision for Analytical Engine devised by ...

Throughout history, humans have made independent, more or less simultaneous discoveries and inventions. For example, Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz discovered calculus, Charles Darwin and ...

To most people, the phrase “electronic computer” conjures up a baffling maze of wires, transistors, magnetic tapes, punch cards, and the like, which can somehow or other be used to solve problems of ...