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To: Nathan Zachary

Babbage’s analytical engine was 1) not using stored programming. It was gear work for goodness sake. And 2) It wasn’t using a digital computational method. Jacquard was the one who made the loom machine BTW. And the cards aren’t stored programs because they don’t represent decision trees - merely a physical barrier to passing a needle though.


21 posted on 09/01/2009 7:16:01 AM PDT by TomOnTheRun
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To: TomOnTheRun

What made the Analytical Engine unique was that it was designed to be programmed. It was because of this and the fact that it would be more than 100 years that any similar devices would be constructed, Charles Babbage, would be considered by many as the “father of computing”. Because of legal, financial, and political obstacles, the Analytical Machine would never be completed. Charles Babbage was also difficult to work with and alienated the supporters of his work.


23 posted on 09/01/2009 7:18:21 AM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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To: TomOnTheRun
Here is yet another "father of computer sciences".

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), constructed in the US in 1943, is widely regarded as the first functionally useful electronic general-purpose computer. Influenced by the ABC, it was a turning point in the history of computing and was used to perform ballistics trajectory calculations and used 160 kW of power. World War II is known to be the driving force of computing hardware development and one of such use of computers was in communications encryption and decryption.

25 posted on 09/01/2009 7:20:14 AM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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