Charles Babbage, father of the computer, was born
On this day · 26 December 1791
Born on this day in 1791, Babbage designed engines that anticipated the programmable computer by more than a century.
On December 26, 1791, Charles Babbage was born in south London. A restless polymath, he grew frustrated with the error-riddled mathematical tables of his day and resolved to mechanize calculation itself.
His first scheme, the Difference Engine, was announced to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1822; it would grind out tables automatically by repeated addition. He never finished it. But by 1834 Babbage had sketched something far bolder: the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine with a “store” (memory) and a “mill” (processor), programmed by punched cards.
Babbage is widely regarded as the originator of the concepts behind the present-day computer.
The Analytical Engine never advanced beyond detailed drawings, yet its logical architecture is strikingly close to a modern computer’s. Babbage died in 1871, his great machine unbuilt and largely unappreciated. Vindication came posthumously, once electronics finally made his century-old vision practical.
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