Den analytiska maskinen

Modell av den analytiska maskinen i London Science Museum.

Den analytiska maskinen var världens första ritning på en programmerbar dator, från år 1837. Den blev aldrig byggd.

Konstruktören var Charles Babbage. Hans vän Ada Lovelace var den person som kom med idén om den analytiska maskinen. I samband med presentationen av maskinen skrev hon vad som senare angetts som världens första datorprogram.

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Analytical Engine (2290032530).jpg
Författare/Upphovsman: Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A., Licens: CC BY 2.0
Modern model of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine displayed at the Science Museum, London.
The Analytical Engine - the world's first mechanical computer - was invented by Charles Babbage in 1834. It was his most visionary idea, and this small section was under construction when he died. Like modern computers, the Analytical Engine has a processor, a memory and a way to input information and output results.

The Analytical Engine would have been programmed using punched cards an idea babbage took from looms used to weave patterned cloth. The machine could store numbers and results in its memory, and process them in its mill. Babbage also planned that the machine would be able to do several calculations at once - what we now call parallel processing.

Babbage hoped to fund his Analytical Engine by writing a novel, or even by creating a machine to play noughts and crosses for cash. If he had finished the Analytical Engine it would have been over 4 metres tall and 6 metres long, and probably powered by steam.

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Glen Beck and Betty Snyder program the ENIAC in building 328 at the Ballistic Research Laboratory.jpg
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glen Beck (background) and Betty Snyder (foreground) program the ENIAC in building 328 at the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL).