Babbage's Analytical Engine - Computerphile

Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine was designed as the first Turing complete computer - before Turing was even born. Sadly it was never built. Professor Brailsford explains with the help of Sydney Padua's illustrations.

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This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.

[CorneliusSneedley]

I just love listening to Professor Brailsford's voice. It's like a kindly uncle reading us bedtime stories about computers. :)

[Herby-]

IBM's original name for "read only memory" was actually ROS (read only store). This was the name used on the System 360 machines. They were actually sheets of plastic with conductive things.

[Dragonblaster]

Babbage was a top-class mathematician, once Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, as were Newton, Dirac and Hawking (and Lt. Cdr. Data). He knew about binary, but he knew denary (base-10) was more compatible with round gears.

[BillyBobJimPatton]

Mechanical machines that were theorised and built, not to far back in the past, operate in such a similar way to their modern counterparts that it makes you realise the basis of the technology used in modern computing is still very much in its infancy.

[steveger]

"racks and pinions like you've never dreamed of in your worst nightmares" made me smile

[SteelSkin]

This is basically a steampunk enthusiast's wet dream.

[ct-cw]

I really like this guy and how he explains things. You can tell how knowledgeable he is, but he has a great sense of humor too.

[Teck_]

Fascinating where we've been, how far we've come, and how far we've still left to go...

[BALAGE]

A thing that Prof. Brailsford considers old. You don't see many of those.

[wroughtironmgtow]

I live in Texas and used to work at a hotel where I met an elderly Mexican tourist who was an admirer of Babbage.He introduced me to his work and said he even went to Great Britain to visit either his home or the museum about him.Its been so long ago it's a little fuzzy.This took place in March of 2005.

[MattyFez]

Always love the videos with Professor Brailsford

[Mathijs]

2:00 Cats have been around computers from the very beginning.

[miroslavhoudek]

What is the point of building such a machine, if neon LEDs were not invented yet to make custom lighting of it?

[Palifiox]

Second computer I used was an ICL and the central processor was called a mill. Each program was supposed to minimise "mill time". Interface was a Telex type machine which recorded my input on paper. There was one error message, it was "?". To make a program work you had to be a half decent typist. Some of the users had probably never even seen a keyboard except on a typewriter as they walked past. Mega-frustration. I still can't type properly.

[Datande]

What a magnificent machine! It really gives one a perspective on just how incredible the technology that we take for granted truly is. Thank you for another fascinating video!

[Biped]

I bet debugging this would have been fun :P

[ValleysOfRain]

Can you imagine how they'd have to deal with component failures on this machine? It's bad enough with the vacuum tubes in things like ENIAC, which would all have to be shut down and left to cool before someone had to crawl in and find the blown tube, but that would be a relatively simple proposition compared with hunting down a gear or ratchet or spring which had failed, and they would fail at an alarming rate, given the complexity of the machine and the sheer friction generated in use. The room in which this would have been housed would have been incredibly noisy and hot.

[davidgrisez]

Charles Babbage must have been an incredible genius. He made all the plans for a fully mechanical computer long before electronic computers would be developed. Likely one of the main reasons this Analytical Engine was never built is that it would have cost an enormous amount of money to build such a large complex mechanical machine like this in the mid nineteenth century. Even today to build this mechanical computer would cost an enormous amount of money and would only be useful as a museum item, because we have modern electronic digital computers.

[the_jimnasium]

I just recently got into computer science and I am kind of late to the game (I am 23 and already have a degree) but these videos inspire me to learn more. Thank you.

[jacobjonsson]

Thanks for advertising Sydney Padua's book, I got it for myself for christmas based on the drawing in here (started reading it early but I think hot cocoa, blanket, fire, and book will happen a lot in the near future!).