In autumn of 1840, Charles Babbage arrived in Turin for a meeting of Italian scientists, where he gave the only public explanation of the workings of his “Analytical Engine.” This machine was the ...

Created by Charles Babbage, the Analytical Engine was a general-purpose, completely program-controlled, mechanical digital computer with no human intervention. It was designed to be programmed using ...

Ada Lovelace, a visionary ahead of her time, imagined programmable machines long before electronic computers came into being.

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine was never completed, but that’s not really the point. It was the idea: a machine capable of computing anything that could possibly be computed. That’s more or less ...

As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

To fund the creation of Apple's first computer, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs sold... English engineer Charles Babbage (1791-1871) is recognized as the "father of computing" for inventing the first ...

Ada Lovelace, the pioneering mathematician of the 19th century, dreamed of machines that could do more than calculate. She ...

A model of a part of the Analytical Engine built by Charles Babbage, as displayed at the Science Museum in London.Wikimedia Commons Yesterday marked the anniversary of the 1871 death of Charles ...

This article was taken from the May 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by ...