History

The Analytical Engine was, or would have been if it had ever been completed, the world's first general-purpose computer. It was designed in the 1830s by the English mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage. Babbage was a mathematician at Cambridge University where he received his Master of Arts in 1817, and later, like Sir Isaac Newton, whose mathematical principles he helped put forward, occupied the Lucasian chair in mathematics.

His stated intention was to create an Engine that "is a machine to calculate the numerical value or values of any formula or function of which the mathematician can indicate the method of solution. It is to perform the ordinary rules of arithmetic in any order as previously settled by the mathematician, and any number of times and on any quantities." From this description it is easy to see that the Analytical Engine is nothing short of a...