CSE Undergrad News » Interesting article from Lazowska

Interesting article from Lazowska

—— Forwarded message ———-

From: Nicholas FitzGerald <nfitz@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 8:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Cs-grads] Fwd: [IP] Computer Experts Building 1830s Babbage Analytical Engine – NYTimes.com
To: Ed Lazowska <lazowska@cs.washington.edu>
Cc: Cs-Ugrads <cs-ugrads@cs.washington.edu>, Faculty <faculty@cs.washington.edu>, Cs-Grads <cs-grads@cs.washington.edu>, Staff <cs-staff@cs.washington.edu>, Lyndsay Downs <lcd@lazowska.org>

If anyone is interested in this, Doran Swade’s book “The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer” is an excellent and relatively short read. It has two parts: first being a biography of Babbage’s attempts to build his engines, and the second is an account of the modern day project to recreate the Difference Engine (the precursor to the Analytical Engine which they are now attempting to recreate). You can see a video of the Difference Engine here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0anIyVGeWOI

– Nicholas

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Ed Lazowska <lazowska@cs.washington.edu> wrote:

Terrific computer history article!

Begin forwarded message:

From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: November 8, 2011 8:35:57 AM EST
To: “ip” <ip@listbox.com>
Subject: [IP] Computer Experts Building 1830s Babbage Analytical Engine – NYTimes.com
Reply-To: dave@farber.net

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/science/computer-experts-building-1830s-babbage-analytical-engine.html?ref=technology
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: November 7, 2011

Researchers in Britain are about to embark on a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to build a computer — but their goal is neither dazzling analytical power nor lightning speed.
Indeed, if they succeed, their machine will have only a tiny fraction of the computing power of today’s microprocessors. It will rely not on software and silicon but on metal gears and a primitive version of the quaint old I.B.M. punch card.

What it may do, though, is answer a question that has tantalized historians for decades: Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s, a hundred years before the idea was put forth in its modern form by Alan Turing

snip

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November 8, 2011