It's Time To Build the Analytical Engine

macslocum writes "John Graham-Cumming is launching a project to finish Charles Babbage's dream and build an Analytical Engine for public display. The goal: inspire future generations of scientists to work on their own 100-year leaps."

Comments

Re:Is it just me?

[darkstar949]

Jacquard looms had been around for awhile and used punch cards to control how the machine operated. Likewise, changing the punch cards would allow for a different pattern to be made. However, these were by no means general purpose computers and were also not capable of preforming calculations.

Re:Analytical Engine: No Definitive Design Exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's why the first step is "Figure out what the Analytical Engine is". The idea is that they would look over old drawings, use them where they make sense, and fill in the missing bits with whatever would have been available at the time. It would be *an* Analytical Engine rather than *the* Analytical Engine.

dom