What If Babbage Had Succeeded?

mikejuk writes "It was on this day 220 years ago (December 26 1791) that Charles Babbage was born. The calculating machines he invented in the 19th century, although never fully realized in his lifetime, are rightly seen as the forerunners of modern programmable computers. What if he had succeeded? Babbage already had plans for game arcades, chess playing machines, sound generators and desktop publishing. A Victorian computer revolution was entirely possible."

Comments

Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing special in the time we live that allows this technology to exist. Computing could have been a reality at any time given the correct understanding of math, mechanics and a society forward thinking enough to see the value in pursuing it.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm... it didn't ask "what if it was possible". The last sentence of the summary is, "A Victorian computer revolution was entirely possible."

The question was more, "What would the world have been like had he succeeded, then and centuries later". Or did you skip most of it to get a first post?

Re:Of course it was possible

[mikael]

It almost seems possible that it could have been done much earlier. Automatic sources of rotary motion were known (waterwheel, steam engine) along with gearing mechanisms.

One of the first "programmable toys" was a cart controlled by a winding string

But it wasn't until the Industrial revolution in the 1850's, that the use of punched cards for storing instructions and input data that made mathematical calculating machines possible. That's one important factor. The other one is the use of mathematical notation for expressing algebra that can be converted into instructions.

What if he had got both these engines working by 1849? Would he have moved onto more advanced calculations or extended the use of mechanical computation to commerce like Hollerith punched cards did in 1889? If so, that would have advanced computing by 40 years.

First documented geared calculating mechanism (Antikythera) 150 - 100BC

First documented use of waterwheels - 300BC

First documented Steam Engine - 1AD

First use of punched cards - 1725AD

Re:Of course it was possible

[EdIII]

I think he was stuck on the many-worlds interpretation which allows for a universe to exist in which he is not a virgin in his mother's basement.

When you think about it in that context, of course anything could be possible.

Personally, I think that computing as it exists now is much like finding life in the universe similar to ours. If you think about it, so many things could have gone differently. Personal computing may have never taken off, languages could be different, etc. Imagine that the US lost World War II and you had a fascist state in which personal computing was trying to evolve. Not that hard to imagine considering that is where we are headed with legislation.....

The world of computing is in constant flux and changing from one moment to the next which is what makes it so interesting to me.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. A Victorian computer revolution was certainly possible.

For that matter, I suppose a Roman computer revolution was possible too.. Primitive, toy steam engines have been excavated from roman ruins; and there's the Antikythera that show evidence that ancient Rome was, perhaps, on the cusp of some major breakthroughs.

Imagine if Rome hadn't been sacked by the Goths. If the dark ages hadn't fallen. If we hadn't had to wait 1000+ years for the Renaissance. The industrial revolution might have taken place in 600 C.E. and we might have had a 'Roman Babbage' by 700 or 800 C.E. instead.

Then image where we'd be now.

Re:Of course it was possible

[datavirtue]

From my study of Catholic cultural intervention (the various crusade activities) I realized that we would have had our current level of technology about 1000 years ago had they not meticulously stamped out all attempts to gather and exchange knowledge (particularly the Albigensian era). To the minds of most educated people I think this trend kicked off at the two burnings of the library of Alexandria.

Re:Of course it was possible

[datavirtue]

All of this is post Renaissance which is a phenomenon born of a totally different set of circumstances. Had their not been a need for the renaissance you could subtract the time between antiquity and the Renaissance that was needed to advance technology of any nature. This time subtraction amounts to about 1000 years (the dark ages).

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have been like the hacking game in Bioshock, derrrrr!

Re:Of course it was possible

[Shadow of Eternity]

Given the current state of things in the US I'm not entirely sure that deserves to be in the past tense.

Re:Of course it was possible

[V!NCENT]

I'd say the internet is much more important than the computer itself, even though a computer is needed to fuel the internet.

Global communication is what made the computer explode in terms of usefulness.

Re:Of course it was possible

[V!NCENT]

Not much about it has changed. In fact I'd say almost nothing changed. It's more software than hardware.

Re:Of course it was possible

[realityimpaired]

But it wasn't until the Industrial revolution in the 1850's, that the use of punched cards for storing instructions and input data that made mathematical calculating machines possible. That's one important factor. The other one is the use of mathematical notation for expressing algebra that can be converted into instructions.

What if he had got both these engines working by 1849? Would he have moved onto more advanced calculations or extended the use of mechanical computation to commerce like Hollerith punched cards did in 1889? If so, that would have advanced computing by 40 years.

Yes, it would have advanced computing by about 40 years. But computing had reached a plateau in the 1940's (and arguably before then, there just wasn't any impetus to make a digital computer before WWII), and couldn't really advance any further than it had at that point until the invention of the transistor... the transistor itself arose from a chance discovery in late 1947, and wasn't readily available until the mid 1950's. Similarly, the integrated circuit wasn't available until the mid 1950's, either. In the absence of those technologies, it's arguable how far computing could have advanced beyond how far it had already advanced by the late 1940's, and neither IC's nor the transistor arose from people researching how to improve computers.

It really is debatable how far computing could have gone if Babbage had succeeded, considering that the computer revolution really didn't take off until integrated circuits made miniaturization possible in the 1960's.

Re:Of course it was possible

[CAIMLAS]

The difference is that there was no popularly conceived need for such tools back then. Would you rather spend the modern equivalent of millions on a tabulating machine of some sort, or hire several accountants?

Bookkeeping wasn't nearly as complex than as it is today. There was negligible need for anything like this: society at large moved much slower, and there was time to do the basic arithmetic necessary to meet their needs. (Even today, most people don't need anything much more complex than a calculator around tax time...)

Cryptography was the first demonstrated use for modern computing (during WWII). Now, consider cryptography during the US Civil War. It basically didn't exist: they used cipher disks which utilized simple substitution ciphers and what we might today call a seed (by means of a visual or auditory cue). "Something you know and something you have". Imagine how complex, expensive, and precise the machinery needed to perform WWII-era ciphers would be if it were purely mechanical. It would also have to be fairly single-purpose.

The sad fact is, there's really little practicality to computers until you get to electronics. Even with electronics, it was a long time coming until they were practical for common use, and were only significantly used by governments and large corporations for one-off massive computation (code breaking, report generation, number crunching). The IC really was the bottleneck that needed to be beaten to make them generally practical (in terms of time and money vs. the results).

Re:Of course it was possible

[kamapuaa]

I am an atheist and I hate fucking atheists so much. This idea is completely ludicrous and clearly you're just some weirdo who loves blaming bad things on religion. Possibly as a child you were forced to go to Sunday School when you wanted to play video games and now this is your infantile way of striking back. Anyway keep in mind the Albigensian Crusade was less than a thousand years ago and that many scientific developments of the Roman Empire were preserved in the Indian and Arab empires. Certainly some was lost, but nowhere near a thousand years of progress. Anyway what makes you think the Cathars had loads of advanced scientific knowledge, the idea makes no sense.

The library of Alexander was mostly destroyed by Julius Caesar, and while it was partially rebuilt it slowly grew smaller and smaller over time as the Roman Empire broke down and Alexandria ceased to be the greatest city of the world. Maybe it's fun to blame it on yucky Christians but it's ahistorical.

Re:Of course it was possible

[RobotRunAmok]

From my study of Catholic cultural intervention

Your knowledge of history seems pretty poor. You must have gone to public school.

Re:Of course it was possible

[superwiz]

was Renaissance the cause or the effect of advanced technology? Adaptation of arabic numerals (the technology which enabled then-modern math) was almost concurrent with Thomas Aquinas' logical "proof" of existence of God (the act which is thought to have started the Renaissance by broaching the idea that reason is above God). Since the two developments were essentially concurrent, I wouldn't credit one as more important in causality of the events that followed than the other. It is entirely possible that the technical advances is what forced social changes on society. Gauss, for example, claimed that not introducing a decimal system was Greek's greatest failure. He went so far as to suggest that Dark Ages would not have happened at all if either the Greeks or the Romans had introduced a decimal system. Before knee jerking an answer with some facts you learn in school, think twice whether the level of your own insight on what influences math and scientific development is above that of Gauss.

Re:Of course it was possible

[superwiz]

No, a thousand times no. Had it not been for crusades, Europe would not have been exposed to the decimal system. Without it, Renaissance DEFINITELY would not have happened. Europe most likely would have never been able to withstand and horde and would been over-ran and seen its population reduced to ragtag tribes.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am an atheist and I hate fucking atheists so much. This idea is completely ludicrous and clearly you're just some weirdo who loves blaming bad things on religion. Possibly as a child you were forced to go to Sunday School when you wanted to play video games and now this is your infantile way of striking back."

What a bunch of prefaced bullshit, as the saying goes, "The important thing is you've found a way to feel superior to both". Congratulations!

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh, computers were used to break cryptography during this era, not to actually encode/decode messages. This was done by electro-mechanical devices and most certainly did not compute anything. Read up on the enigma machine to see how it actually worked.

Soooo, I don't really see any point to anything you just said.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Attila Dimedici]

I am confused, what does the burning of the Library of Alexandria have to do with the Catholic Church? There are several stories of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, none of them involve the Church of Rome. The first story says that it was burned by Julius Caesar in 48 BC. The second story says that it was burned by Emperor Aurelian (who reigned before Constantine and attempted to make the Sun God the chief deity of the Roman Empire) when he put down a revolt in Egypt during his reign. The third story says that it was burned by Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria (who considered himself at least equal to the Bishop of Rome). The fourth story says that it was burned by the Muslims when they conquered Egypt.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Teancum]

I'd have to disagree, although the development of computing would have certainly taken a more "leisurely" pace than what it did in the late 20th Century.

What would have happened is that computers would have been seen as these big boxes or even completely separate buildings and have been used mostly for large organizations and governments. Keep in mind that most "Information Technology" departments owe at least some of their heritage to the "high priesthood of computer technicians" where only a select few were granted access to the computers.

I'm old enough to have been alive when programmers didn't even have a terminal on their desktop. Instead they have reams of paper that they carefully wrote software character by character with a pencil and then handed out sheets of code to transcriptionists who converted those sheets of paper into punch cards.... where you might be lucky to get the results of your software test in about a day or two unless your software was a high priority project. "The computer" was a place you could visit and go inside.

The question is how long that era of computer technology would have lasted. If Babbage had succeeded in getting funding from the British government in the 19th Century to complete his devices, their utility certainly would have been obvious and many of the suggestions made in this article would have occurred. Hinted at by the author would be the driving need to develop material science much earlier than actually happened, especially with the need to develop strong and lightweight materials in an attempt to miniaturize the devices. That would have in turn impacted the British military in some rather profound ways that might have pushed them into advancing in a great many other areas of scientific research.

For instance, how would World War One (not Two) have turned out differently with artillery that had the deadly accuracy that ended up being used in the Gulf War of 1990? Would Rudolf Diesel have developed a more efficient engine having those metal parts designed for computing available for internal combustion? How much earlier would aviation had developed with lightweight metals?

It is very hard to say what would have happened. Communications would have been slower (was slower) in the 19th Century, and that would have in turn slowed the development of computing compared to what we have today... but given a hundred year head start it certainly would have impacted more than just computing.

BTW, the integrated circuit didn't become used on a widespread basis until about 1970 or so. One of the very first significant applications of the technology was the Apollo Guidance Computers used for the lunar exploration program, where NASA ended up purchasing a substantial high two-digit percentage fraction of the total world-wide production (and one of the early sources of seed money for developing the semi-conductor industry). Most of the computers built in the 1960's used either vacuum tubes or discrete transistors when they were "improved versions". It is hard to say that computing technology hit a plateau until 1970.

Re:Of course it was possible

[FiloEleven]

What if he had got both these engines working by 1849? Would he have moved onto more advanced calculations or extended the use of mechanical computation to commerce like Hollerith punched cards did in 1889? If so, that would have advanced computing by 40 years.

It could have and in fact likely would have resulted in an entirely different way of developing computers. Someone else said that materials science would have become interesting and important much earlier than it did in order to increase the speed and efficiency of mechanical computers, and I agree. I could imagine bypassing electrical computing almost entirely and instead developing nanoscale mechanical technology or something like that.

It's fascinating stuff to think about and definitely provides lots of fodder for steampunk.

Along the same lines (though I'm now wandering off-topic), I could believe that computing WAS done much earlier, though I don't think it very likely. Every now and then I start wondering if perhaps the Greeks or the Egyptians or the Mayans or someone had some computing power that is too divergent from our own for us to recognize it as such. It's an interesting thought experiment.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Attila. Let me guess, not a single one of those times had anything to do with you right? Not your fault right? That's what you said last time...

Re:Of course it was possible

[mysidia]

neither IC's nor the transistor arose from people researching how to improve computers.

However, supposing there were mechanical computers, and they were useful; there would be an impetus to improve upon the capabilities / efficiency of the mechanical computers.

The availability of computers to scientists could have had a great effect on their studies, and it's difficult to predict what the results of that would have been.

The transistor could have been discovered a lot earlier, if inventors were looking for options, in efforts to find ways of adapting computation mechanisms into electric circuits; once all cost-effective improvements had been considered, computing would stagnate.

The transistor might have been discovered much earlier. LEDs might have been discovered, without a lightbulb ever having been invented -- Tesla might have never come to the US, AC may have not been discovered or put to practical use, even to date....

World War I and II might not have happened; because technology had a role in events leading up to them. With no real moving pictures or radio to use as propaganda tools; low-speed media communication, WWII and WWI are simply unlikely to have sparked...

With no world wars, no cold war, therefore no real investment in space travel, no NASA; no satellites, rockets, GPS, many technologies not existing.
Today, there might be no such thing as personal computers or Cell phones... no radio, no wireless communication, no television, but no PCs = no internet, just a small global network of big companies' number crunchers at most.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

"...many scientific developments of the Roman Empire were preserved in the Indian and Arab empires."

Never mind the parent's accusations; it's pretty significant that knowledge had to be -preserved- during that whole time we call "the Dark Ages"... preserving implies somebody/something is trying to -destroy-. Which was definitely true. It doesn't matter who. The fact that atomic theory, steam power, who knows what else? was being discussed prior to the Church's influence, can't be ignored. I find it incredibly painful to contemplate the possibilities of humanity being held back 800+ years by stone-age superstitions.

Re:Of course it was possible

[AliasMarlowe]

The library of Alexander was mostly destroyed by Julius Caesar, and while it was partially rebuilt it slowly grew smaller and smaller over time as the Roman Empire broke down and Alexandria ceased to be the greatest city of the world.

Actually, scholarly opinion is divided, so don't take it as established fact. The available evidence is ambiguous and rarely first-hand or unbiased, so it's likely to remain controversial.

The fire set by Caesar's troops among the Egyptian navy vessels spread onshore, but only into the port of Alexandria. Many thousands of "books" were burned in the port as a result, but most of them were commercial ledgers and suchlike. The Great Library was not in the port, and likely was relatively unscathed by this fire.

A better case can be made that the Library was destroyed during Emperor Aurelian's conflict with Queen Zenobia, which actually did devastate the requisite part of the city. Of course, being a repository of flammable materials (papyri) with lighting by candles and oil lamps, occasional fires at the Library probably reduced their holdings from time to time.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Forty Two Tenfold]

We could be exploring the Galaxy by now.

Re:Of course it was possible

[doccus]

Yup , I remember the mainframes.. in fact, I remember learning 'computer code" before there were any real programming languages.. no wonder I changed carreers.. just *try* to imagine programming in binary for a minute..

Re:Of course it was possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, more like 700 years: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-phantom-time-hypothesis/

Re:Of course it was possible

[EPAstor]

Imagine how complex, expensive, and precise the machinery needed to perform WWII-era ciphers would be if it were purely mechanical. It would also have to be fairly single-purpose.

You mean, like the Enigma machine? Remarkably simple code... breakable with sufficient processing, or with improper use of the protocols, it's true. However, for all intents and purposes it required a highly-specialized bank of mechanical computers to break the code, and it generally took quite a while if the encryption was being used properly.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Script Cat]

Wouldn't that have been noticed since we now have records from places like China, Japan, India, Persia... Nothing to see here. Just another crackpot.

Re:Of course it was possible

[tibit]

AC is really a stepping stone, as far as power distribution technology goes. The need for it is only when you don't have electronics with enough power-handling capability to partake in power distribution. Transformers working at 50 or 60Hz are monsters, pretty much. Without those transformers, there'd be no need for AC in power distribution. You can make more efficient switching power converters that are comparably tiny. You can push a couple megawatts through a ferrite ring fitting on a sheet of letter size paper. A 200A step-down converter that could power a typical American single family house would fit in a briefcase, with radiator fins sticking out of course (no air cooling and dust mites, thankyouverymuch).

I have a system that takes a bunch of 5kVA isolation transformers. A switching power converter that stands in for one of those transformers fits mostly on your palm. The incoming AC is a pain to deal with, because at those power levels you need to have power factor correction (PFC), and that's just an extra that lowers efficiency only because you need to pretend to be a resistive load to the incoming 50/60Hz sine voltage. If we had DC power distribution, there would be no need for PFC, no need for huge transformers. DC power distribution was a good idea, but pretty much ahead of its time -- useless without fairly complex electronics know-how. Design and testing of switching power supplies needs good instrumentation (wideband differential amps and current probes, storage oscilloscopes, ...). At high power levels you need to build instrumentation into your product, because you can't really test a power converter taking 50kV at the input with the case open and sitting on your desk.

Re:Of course it was possible

[tibit]

It still is being held back. Just look at how much time politicians waste on discussing abortion, same sex marriage, etc.

Re:Of course it was possible

[g0bshiTe]

No matter the advances, I think we would still be exactly where we are today with computing. I don't think it's so much the technology as the average level of intelligence of the general populace.

It really wasn't until the early 1900's that kids weren't out working in their parents fields but were attending schools.

What good would a computing device have been to an illiterate person?

Re:Of course it was possible

[g0bshiTe]

I fail to see how aviation could have been helped by this technology. Computing has nothing to do with metallurgy (you mentioned lighter metals).

Re:Of course it was possible

[Hentes]

First documented geared calculating mechanism (Antikythera) 150 - 100BC

The Antikythera was more like a calendar than a calculator. While some sensationalists like to call it the "world's first computer", that is a huge exaggeration.

The fact is that Babbage's machines were incredibly complex for his time. Even Babbage himself realized that his analytical engine couldn't be built, so instead of trying to build itr he started to work on manufacturing techniques that would allow the construction of some of its parts. The machine would have many points of failure, would have required parts more precise that were available, would have to tolerate the huge forces necessary to operate it (in the original plan it was driven by a steam engine as a human wouldn't be strong enough for it) and would have to survive te wear of all the mechanical parts. Even with modern technology, while there were attempts to recreate the machine, none of them succeeded.

But even if it has been built, it would most likely be just a neat toy, maybe one that could make a few tables more precise. It wouldn't advance computing by much. You see, the drive behind the evolution of computing was exponential growth in the machines' capabilities, which would be impossible with mechanical engines. Even with that, we have had computers since the forties, yet widespread use of them haven't begun since the nineties. The limits were technological and sociological, computer science was pretty well established by the time. A good idea alone will not start a revolution, if the technology or the society isn't ready for it yet.

Re:Of course it was possible

[Godin21]

The computer devices that Babbage designed were mechanical, not digital. If those had caught on, someone would have put effort into reducing the size of those computer devices, especially if they were games that might need a little portability. lighter metals also require less energy to move, and keep moving. Smaller, lighter, faster mechanical machines require lighter, stronger metals. Strangely enough, so do mechanical devices that are intended to fly.

If lighter and stronger materials had been available when aviation was in it's infancy, it's quite probable that flight technology would have progressed faster, since aircraft wouldn't weigh as much.

So in the context of this situation, computing has a lot to do with metallurgy.

Re:Of course it was possible

[mikael]

I read some old books from the 1950's on how they arranged offices, rows and columns of tables of clerks to do the calculating of sub-totals, totals and check-totals just to do the accounting .

Socially, a clerk was one of the safest jobs in the South of England. Live out in the Home Counties, take one of Brunel's trains into London, and work as a clerk from 9 to 5.

Before any kind of automated mechanical technology, a "computer" was a person who did computations, and it was a home-based industry. Papers were sent out to the person, who did the arithmetic and then sent the results back to the sender.

There was a need by the Navy for the automatic calculation of tide tables - resulting in the foundation of signal processing and http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/predma2.html">Tide Predicting machines . Astronomers used orrery's starting in the 18th century.

Very true about the IC - it wasn't until those first 8-bit home computers came out, that anyone could do pure programming at home - unless they wanted to assemble an electronics kit.

Re:Of course it was possible

[mysidia]

AC is really a stepping stone, as far as power distribution technology goes.

Even so... the basic notion here is if scientists were playing around with semiconductors first, and discovered LEDs, photovoltaics, and batteries before lightbulbs... there's a good chance local power generators could have become king, and the concept of power grids and wires for distributing power across long distances never coming into being.

Because long electrical cables are really really expensive. The infrastructure build out was massive, and resulted only from the popularity and efficiency of lightbulbs.

As we know... arrays of LEDs can be built to generate light much more efficiently, as long as you can obtain the proper materials; a household with 5 1 watt LED arrays has microscopic power requirements compared to a household with 5 15 watt electric lightbulbs.

Below a certain amount of wattage; the concept of municipal distribution simply doesn't make any sense from an efficiency perspective; just use a local solar collector for each block.....

Re:Of course it was possible

[tibit]

I agree. A "small" solar panel goes quite a long way when your needs are measured in tens of watts. All of that presumes that heating and cooking could be powered with natural gas. I also don't think that small solar panels are enough to provide forced air circulation, you'd need hydronics for heating, and the only way to cool single family homes then is to use forced air circulation and a zig-zagging subterranean duct.

Re:Of course it was possible

[mysidia]

Yes... it's true.. low wattage is fairly inept for cooking especially, and limited for forced air.

However, electricity was not originally used for cooking, refrigeration, or air conditioning. Light bulbs were the application that really got the technology deployed.

Electric ovens and heaters were incremental additions that came over 20 years after the 1st commercial lightbulbs.

These were incremental additions and additional revenue streams the electric company made possible by infrastructure that was being built to provide lights; electrical lighting that was safer and had many obvious benefits over oil lamps and candles...
electrical heating, not so much.

At the time of electricity being introduced, popular heating and cooking technology already existed that wasn't dependent upon electricity, and an electric oven or heater would have been a very expensive investment for households, as a 1st introduction to electricity.
It would be a suggestion that everyone would suddenly go throw out their gas powered stove, in favor of purchasing a brand new electric one at great cost, so they could try the latest tech?

Electric heating and cooking would have been a much harder sell to justify the buildout of an electrical distribution system... the equipment cost would be prohibitive to the average person, without clear benefit, probably resulting in few buyers, and no positive ROI for the power company.

Now later concepts, such as automatic coffee pots, vacuum cleaners, power tools, electric well pumps, could persuade a corporation to fund a build out in the absence of lights.

But would those things have been commercialized if not for the snowball started by lightbulbs?

We might have some brilliant thermal isolation, low-wattage heating, refrigeration, and cooking technology that is completely unknown to us humans, today, or one of those clean / safe reactor / fuel cell technologies that lets every house be its own power plant :)

Re:Of course it was possible

[tibit]

However, electricity was not originally used for cooking, refrigeration, or air conditioning. Light bulbs were the application that really got the technology deployed.

That's true. In some countries, paying an electricity bill is still called "paying for light".

If he had succeeded

[Anonymous Coward]

The south of Europe flourished. Rome was founded and grew in power several centuries sooner than had previously been the case. Greece was conquered before the flame of Athens burned with its greatest intensity. With the death of Cato the Elder the final Punic War was postponed. Carthage also continued to grow, extending her empire far to the east and the south. The death of Julius Ambrosius aborted the Mithraist revival and Christianity became the state religion in Rome. The Carthaginians spread their power throughout the middle east Mithraism was acknowledged as their state religion.The clash did not occur until the fifth century. Carthage itself was destroyed, the westward limits of its empire pushed back to Alexandria. Fifty years later, the Pope called for a crusade. These occurred with some regularity for the next century and a quarter, further fragmenting the Carthaginian empire while sapping the enormous bureaucracy which had grown up in Italy. The fighting fell off, ceased, the lines were drawn, an economic, depression swept the Mediterranean area. Outlying districts grumbled over taxes and conscription, revolted. The general anarchy which followed the war of secession settled down into a dark age reminiscent of that in the initial undisturbed sequence. Off in Asia Minor, the printing press was not developed.

"Stalemate till then, anyway," said Blood.

"Yes, but look what Newton did."

"How could you have known?"

"That is the difference between a good player and an inspired player. I saw his potential even when he wasfooling around with alchemy. Look what he did for theirscience, single-handed—everything! Your next move wastoo late and too weak."

"Yes. I thought I might still kill their computers bydestroying the founder of International Difference Machines, Ltd."

Dust chuckled.

"That was indeed ironic. Instead of an IDM 120, the Beagle took along a young naturalist named Darwin."

Blood glanced along to the end of the sequence where the radioactive dust was scattered across a lifeless globe.

"But it was not the science that did it, or the religion."

"Of course not," said Dust. "It is all a matter of emphasis."

Re:If he had succeeded

[iluvcapra]

It's traditional to attribute such quotes.

Re:If he had succeeded

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that in a compendium of short stories. Do recommend! (GP modified the story a little)

We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[zill]

Just think of all the possibilities...

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[smpoole7]

Stephen Stirlings "Peshawar Lancers" has the British Empire move to India after an catastrophe, and they had an analytical engine as well. Eric Flint's alternate history might make better reading if you're postulating "what if." Flint covers "gearing down," because in order to make advanced technology, there's a logical procession. Many of the things that we take for granted are the result of incremental improvements and discoveries.

Simply put, there's no way to make the leap from a mechanical "analytical engine" OR a mechanical "difference calculator" even to to the original IBM PC. (Or for that matter, the first Z80-based 8 bit computers.)

There's no doubt that Babbage might have moved technology forward a few decades. But what you and I know of as "computers" nowadays are based on a number of discoveries, from physics (Quantam Theory, in particular) to electromagnetism to advanced fab technologies for silicon to you name it.

I love reading alternative history, but I prefer those that are realistic. If you and I were to find ourselves as the "Yankee In King Author's Court," we'd actually be frustrated more than anything else. There's so much technology that even our grandparents took for granted that wouldn't be available.

Just the ability to measure down to microns (and smaller) is vital when making a great deal of modern technology.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[smpoole7]

And by the way, I also ought to add ... if Babbage HAD started a revolution that moved technology forward even just a few decades, WWI quite possibly wouldn't have been survivable for the species. There would have been pockets of civilization that survived with a hunter-gatherer or farming level of technology, but it would have been bad. VERY bad.

Think about it. Given the attitudes and mores of the time (and that's something else that most of us don't think about, by the way), if either side had had nukes (just to name one), much less truly accurate targeting "computers" and other innovations (or unmanned drones with nukes, sheesh!), it would have been an even greater bloodbath than it was. :/

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[rickb928]

Jus being able to refine ballistic tables could have made WWI much more lethal. It mightmade longer-ranged artillery practical, and of course better weapons get used more.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[smpoole7]

> Jus being able to refine ballistic tables could have made WWI much more lethal.

Exactly. Like I said, though, the big problem was the attitudes back then. We easily make the mistake of assuming that people back then thought like we do nowadays. That's NOT the case. Look up that famous image of a young Adolf Hitler standing in the square when WWI was announced, hat waving in the air and cheering. Then look at that equally-famous image of Americans equally as thrilled when the US entered the war, cheering Woodrow Wilson.

Kind of frightening, really, if you were to give these people even just the technology that existed in WWII -- real fighter planes, aircraft carriers, submarines, better calculators for targeting, and so on.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[turbidostato]

"Given the attitudes and mores of the time"

Well, for once, it was not the attitude of the time to focus on civilian targets; that was more the WWII attitude.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no historian, but I seem to recall that in WWII, when the Allies bombed Germany, the targets generally were the factories; and the Germans deliberately put their factories in the middle of populated areas. (Were they relying on us being less willing to bomb them for fear of collateral damage?)

But when the Germans bombed London, they weren't targeting factories, they were deliberately trying to terrorize the civilian population.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Shadow of Eternity]

As opposed to americans cheering over entering Iraq and casting bitter recriminations and epithets at those who disagreed?

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[peragrin]

This is why I love conspiracy theories involving aliens in 1949. Literally the technology to understand one quarter of a crashed alien spaceship wouldn't get invented for another 30+ years.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[znerk]

But the Germans *did* have long range targeting, and weapons capable of using that data (indeed, the "Paris Gun" was the reason for discovering how the Coriolis Effect affected their targeting - at ranges of roughly 75 miles (120km), the rotation of the earth was enough to affect the projected 3-minute trajectory of the weapon's explosive projectiles).

In other words, your conclusion is based on a false premise. More information is always a good thing, when asking questions about possibilities.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[znerk]

See my comment, above, for more information concerning WW1 long range artillery. As in, "75 miles (120km) to target" long-range projectile weapons.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been playing too many RTS games with a grand unified "technology pole."

Having advanced analog calculating devices would have made crunching numbers to verify hypotheses in subatomic physics easier to verify, but it wouldn't necessarily have made devising the hypotheses themselves any easier or faster. Besides, never underestimate the number-crunching power of desperate grad students.

Consider the age of the Antikythera Device and compare it to how "old" the falsifiable heliocentric model is.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[realityimpaired]

I'm no historian, but I seem to recall that in WWII, when the Allies bombed Germany, the targets generally were the factories; and the Germans deliberately put their factories in the middle of populated areas. (Were they relying on us being less willing to bomb them for fear of collateral damage?)

The allies carpet-bombed Hamburg, and fire-bombed Dresden. Between the two campaigns, both cities were almost completely destroyed, and about 100,000 victims. Only about 40,000 civilians were killed during the German bombing of England. It wasn't because the Germans deliberately put their factories in civilian areas (the English did the same), it was because the allies were bombing from very high altitude and there was a great deal of luck involved in actually hitting your target from that altitude.

And in preparation for D-Day, they completely levelled some cities in northern France. (seriously... the ground is now more than 1m higher in Caen than it was before WWII, and the cathedral was the only building left standing in that city following the allied bombardment... and even the cathedral was partly destroyed... they even destroyed the citadel of William the Conqueror, because of the risk that it could be used by German soldiers to hide out... and Caen had no industrial complex to speak of, it was just a military stronghold).

Bombs, at least the kind of bombs they were using in WWII, were not a precision instrument. The primary targets were factories, railroads, things like that. But the standing order for most aircrews was "drop any remaining ordnance wherever you want before coming home".

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[superwiz]

Well, for once, it was not the attitude of the time to focus on civilian targets; that was more the WWII attitude.

Industrial production was very labor intensive. So servicing it required large populations. In fact, servicing industrial production is the reason why most modern cities appeared.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because it took that long to reverse engineer the technology!!! Sheesh!

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

Just being able to refine ballistic tables could have made WWI much more lethal.

I don't think so.

Before WWI machine guns could already lay accurate machine gun fire on a man at more than a mile's distance and reach almost double that. There was no problem with the ballistics tables used at that time since they were based on experimentation as well as calculation.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[rickb928]

But the early programmable computers that got used for ballistics in WWII didn't so much reinvent the practice as make it much quicker to calculate the tables. This permitted designers to deploy new shells and guns quickly, and that gives you an advantage - even if the advantage is just being able to keep improving your armament while your enemy does not keep pace. Not to mention the usefulness of ENIAC in developing the atom bomb.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Lanteran]

ENIAC was actually post WWII, wasn't started until 1946 if memory serves.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming is injecting code into systems, and DNA is code, and Ada is named after Ada Lovelace, who died in 1852... you're one sick mofo.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[rickb928]

ENIAC did work on the atom bomb, ballistics, etc., but did not begin useful operations until 1946, true. UPenn ran an analog analyser that did most of the work during WWII, and built a second one for the Army. This mechanical analyser spurred the development of ENIAC.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[bkaul01]

and of course better weapons get used more.

As evidenced by the fact that only two nuclear weapons have ever been used, while we continue to use less-effective conventional weapons on a regular basis?

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Anonymous Coward]

please don't use 'only.' England was fighting the Germans for most of the war, while the Germans pushed through multiple countries until they really focused on England. In addition, it was England's serious air superiority that saved them from invasion at all. 'Only' 40,000 makes it seem like they did it better or didn't try as hard or whatnot. If they had been at England from that start, OR England didn't have enormous air superiority, FAR more English civilian casualties would have resulted from bombing.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[Dan1701]

The major lethality of WW I was not down to artillery at all, but was attributable to barbed wire and machine guns. Prior to this war, infantry was vulnerable to cavalry and artillery wasn't much use except on fixed targets. Barbed wire changed all that; cavalry cannot move at all through barbed wire emplacements, and infantry is very greatly slowed down. Machine guns are the other major innovation which made cavalry charges lethal to cavalry, and made cutting barbed wire deadly dangerous. Artillery duels and trench warfare were effectively the result of both sides' military command realising that the old tactics didn't work, and collectively saying "Dur, what do we do now?". Shelling trenches drove men mad, and massed assaults slaughtered thousands, but were both tactics born of lack of ideas.

Development of Babbage computers wouldn't have altered the lethality of this sort of war. What changes this sort of war to WW II styles is the development of better internal combustion engines, which allows armour and air power.

Re:We'd be all programming in Ada right now

[sjames]

Or, it might have ended earlier as the generals and politicians who sat safely back at HQ during the entire years long massacre realized that THEY might actually die in continued warfare.

Then..

[Haedrian]

1800 would have been the year of Linux on the Desktop.

Re:Then..

[zill]

Sucks for Linus I guess, getting kidnapped by a bunch of time traveling Victorian thugs.

Re:Then..

[blindseer]

Would those be robotic clockwork time traveling Victorian thugs?

fyrmest

[Anonymous Coward]

fyrmest !

Here's TFA

[rgbrenner]

Very interesting read. Here's a complete copy of the article for anyone who's interested:

Catchable fatal error: Argument 1 passed to TeraWurfl::addTopLevelSettings() must be an array, null given, called in /home/iprogr6/public_html/plugins/mobile/terawurfl/TeraWurfl.php on line 334 and defined in /home/iprogr6/public_html/plugins/mobile/terawurfl/TeraWurfl.php on line 463

Re:Here's TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the steam powered TeraWurfl engine has a bug stuck in its gears. google cache

"what if" game

[roman_mir]

and what if a great-grandmother had balls? She'd be great-grandfather.

The point is that Babbage did succeed, except it was through his inspiration, which took his ideas and better manufacturing processes and newer knowledge of materials and a refined computing model.

Re:"what if" game

[Jane Q. Public]

"The point is that Babbage did succeed, except it was through his inspiration, which took his ideas and better manufacturing processes and newer knowledge of materials and a refined computing model."

This is a common misconception based on earlier analyses. In fact, portions of his engines have been built from the original plans, using techniques available in his day, and it has been determined that it would indeed have worked if only it had been built.

Contrary to popular belief, the two biggest problems that Babbage faced were: (1) his inability to convince investors in the worth of his invention, and (2) his insistence on constant refinement rather than freezing the plans at some viable point, in order to make a working device.

Re:"what if" game

[timeOday]

The mechanical approach was still a dead end that was not on the path to anything like where we are today. He was like the guys, previous to the Wright Brothers, who spent their (short) lives working on flapping wings. You could argue they had the right idea - heaver-than-air powered flight - and thus inspired those who came after - but the fact remains, they were barking up the wrong tree.

I think people are overvaluing the idea of "computation" in the abstract, rather than the implementation of actual machines to do it quickly, reliably, and cheaply. The ones that finally did so didn't owe much to Babbage. The idea of doing calculations faster has always been there, and once there were practical machines to do so, there was no delay waiting for a conceptual leap in how to exploit and generalize them.

Re:"what if" game

[MightyMartian]

Yes and no. Mechanical computers do not have the scalability of electronic computers, to be sure, so that line of development would have reached its end.

At the same time, having a Turing complete computer, even a mechanical one, in the first half of the 19th century would have given mathematicians and engineers a whole new grammar to begin working on, much as even the relatively primitive digital computers of the 1940s to 1960s spurred on an absolutely astonishing amount of R&D, some of it still bearing fruit today.

I expect that if the Babbage machines had been built and had been put to use, they would have spurred the digital revolution nearly a century earlier, concentrating huge amounts of R&D by the Great Powers in the post-Napoleonic era. The military value, for instance, of fast and accurate cannon/mortar trajectory calculations would have given whoever developed such machines a considerable edge. The late 19th-early 20th century arms race was transformative in many ways, and the successors of Babbage's machines would have been caught up in that.

Re:"what if" game

[JustNilt]

The mechanical approach was still a dead end that was not on the path to anything like where we are today. He was like the guys, previous to the Wright Brothers, who spent their (short) lives working on flapping wings. You could argue they had the right idea - heaver-than-air powered flight - and thus inspired those who came after - but the fact remains, they were barking up the wrong tree.

The difference (ha!) here is that the flapping wings didn't work for powering manned flight while the Babbage machines would have. Sure they'd have been limited but they would have worked ! From there, as TFA says, refinements would have been implemented. It isn't as though modern computers are what was first designed, implemented or even conceived of. Great progress such as we've seen typically requires LOTS of folks putting their own mark on things.

Somewhat OT but imagine what would have happened had the Greeks realized the true power of steam. That they were tinkering with it is well known. We might have had flying chariots by now!

Re:"what if" game

[datavirtue]

All of which were set back about 1000 years by the dark ages and the mentality that still pervades.

Re:"what if" game

[roman_mir]

Somewhat OT but imagine what would have happened had the Greeks realized the true power of steam. That they were tinkering with it is well known. We might have had flying chariots by now!

Flying chariots? Like these?

Re:"what if" game

[Anonymous Coward]

and (2) his insistence on constant refinement rather than freezing the plans at some viable point, in order to make a working device.

So in other words, he also invented the "causing a project to fail by constantly changing requirements" method so popular in IT management nowadays... :)

Re:"what if" game

[Jane Q. Public]

On the contrary: mechanical "adding machines", while far simpler than Babbage's more general device, could be and were built, using principles similar to Babbage's. They were in commercial use clear up until 1985.

So even if a few of Babbage's full-scale machine were only used by rich institutions (like government), smaller and simpler versions would surely have found plenty of good use.

Even a custom-built device, designed to do nothing but calculate cosines, could have had a major impact on war.

Re:"what if" game

[znerk]

... as spoken by someone who obviously didn't read the article.

Your entire premise is flawed, in that had Babbage been able to fund the production of his machine, then he would have created "an actual machine to do it quickly, reliably, and cheaply." His Analytical Engine was a precursor to modern digital machines, and the article expresses how we might have been exactly where we are now, except 100 years earlier... and with a different power source.

It even postulates that something approximating the internet might have emerged, using the telegraph instead of the telephone - and we wouldn't have had to convert from digital to analog and back again, because the dots and dashes are digital to start with.

Babbage's Analytical Engine worked, he just never actually built it.

Re:"what if" game

[znerk]

Unfortunately, the link you supplied is broken, due to the referrer being outside imdb.com's domain. Perhaps if you linked to the movie the image belongs to, instead, you would have at least gotten a "funny" mod, instead of being largely ignored because you didn't check your links in the preview pane.

Just saying.

Re:"what if" game

[timeOday]

The difference (ha!) here is that the flapping wings didn't work for powering manned flight while the Babbage machines would have.

But even if we go ahead and give Babbage full credit for his invention (pretending he'd marshaled the resources to build a working copy), would computers as we know them have occurred any sooner? Here's the crux of the article in my view:

In addition the need to build more and better machines would have caused a rapid development in materials science. With better, stronger, lighter materials the speed of the future Analytical Engines could have been increased yet further. Admittedly, with moving parts involved, the Analytical Engine would have reached a point where making it go faster would have been difficult.

IMO, mechanical computing was a dead end. Babbage was ahead of his time, but mechanical computers did get a fair shake eventually, and proved to be a dead end. The theory of computation owes more to pure mathematics, and the mechanism of computation owes more to those who came along a little later and explored electricity. IMO.

Re:"what if" game

[znerk]

All of which were set back about 1000 years by the dark ages and the mentality that still pervades.

To further your point: The US has shot itself in the foot by impeding the progress of medical science. All the vehement arguments about stem cell research that caused the US to outlaw accessing the best source of stem cells has resulted in Belgium coming up with a cure for AIDS, instead of the US.

Here's a link to the NYTimes story. Please keep in mind while reading it that the story seems to have a massive "sour grapes" slant, deeming the procedure "impractical" due in part to the fact that the patient's immune system must be destroyed prior to the procedure... which seems laughable to jeer about, since AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) destroys the patient's immune system, causing death from such agents as "the common cold". Doing the same thing in a controlled fashion, allowing the patient to be in a controlled environment for the duration of the procedure, seems a lot less "impractical".

The gist of the matter is that the American populace has been told "it's expensive, and might kill the patient" in lieu of telling them "it's expensive, and might kill the patient, but this will actually rid the body of HIV, instead of making the patient take dangerous drugs every day for the rest of their life".

Think of the lives that could have been saved if the American research facilities had come up with this idea first. If that doesn't motivate you enough, think of all the money that the US has just lost because they shortsightedly allowed the "moral implications" of acquiring research material from non-viable fetal tissue to justify outlawing an entire field of research that just panned out... for someone else.

Re:"what if" game

[marcosdumay]

The power of steam is known since ancient times.

What people did discover recently is how to do something other than exploding things with that power. That was thanks to lots of advances on physics and material working, and that last one didn't stop advancing through the Midle Ages.

Re:"what if" game

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular belief, the two biggest problems that Babbage faced were: (1) his inability to convince investors in the worth of his invention, and (2) his insistence on constant refinement rather than freezing the plans at some viable point, in order to make a working device.

He also provided the model for Duke Nukem Forever not working.

Re:"what if" game

[roman_mir]

in fact I did check it in the preview and it does open in any of the 2 browsers I got here, so, maybe it's just your set up.

Re:"what if" game

[Anonymous Coward]

It all comes down to whoever the douchebag is who killed Archimedes, really.

Re:"what if" game

[BiggerIsBetter]

So you'd be OK with paying Babbages descendents a royalty for every computing device implemented since then?

Re:"what if" game

[DarkOx]

I am not so sure. It took men like Shockley working on what were at the time very different disiplines to solve semiconductor physics to the point they could be manufactured in economy suitable for computer parts. I can easily imagine Babbage derived machines evolving into the vacume valve and electromechanical based machines of the 40's but things may will have peaked there!

Re:"what if" game

[roman_mir]

You still owe the "wheel" and the "fire" royalties to me due to my great predecessors, so please.

Re:"what if" game

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just him.

Re:"what if" game

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the usual referral & cache issue. The link is good, but only with the right referrer (in this case, no referrer also works). But once you've loaded it once (in any form, including as an image imbedded in the original webpage on imdb), the link will continue to work for you no matter the referrer as long as your web browser cache is maintained. This is because the web browser doesn't treat a different referrer as a different link.

Re:"what if" game

[Anonymous Coward]

What Babbage needed was a Steve Jobs to sell his home brew computer.

Re:"what if" game

[Rakishi]

They knew how to use Steam to power an "engine" even in ancient Rome. They simply found no need to use that knowledge for anything practical for a variety of reasons.

Re:"what if" game

[91degrees]

using techniques available in his day

Sorry to nitpick, but the one in the Science Museum was built using modern equipment - much of it computer controlled.

That is a nitpick though. Your point is valid. The tolerances were the same. Victorian engineers were capable of some very precise engineering. They had micrometers and milling tools and standardised measurements and parts.

Re:"what if" game

[CdBee]

Principally that in a society where slaves are cheap but firewood or coal are expensive, steam engines aren't a priority

Re:"what if" game

[sidthegeek]

They knew how to use Steam to power an "engine" even in ancient Rome.

Unfortunately, they had to break the DRM to do that, and the ancient copyright czars had them executed. With the smartest members of the society gone, the Roman empire could not progress and it eventually collapsed.

Re:"what if" game

[Jane Q. Public]

More than one were built. 4 or 5 universities have now built portions of the Difference Engine, using different starting points. I do not have the reference at hand, but I know that at least one of them used techniques that were carefully researched and found to be available in Babbage's time. Probably not cheaply, though.

Re:"what if" game

[znerk]

Rather than being snarky, maybe you should have replied with a link to the movie, as I requested? This entire (off-topic) thread is about imdb's failure to play nice with the rest of the internet, and your failure to implement the workaround I supplied instructions for.

Any further replies from you in this thread without the link I asked for will be met with extreme contempt, complete with expressed and implied detrimental comments about your intellectual capacity, family lineage, etc.

We're already risking downmods by even having this conversation - don't be stupid and make it worse.

Re:"what if" game

[roman_mir]

Jesus, relax. It was a simple picture.

Re:"what if" game

[b4dc0d3r]

If it happens again, just go to the address bar and hit Enter or Go. Same link, but no referrer header. This doesn't work if the error page is a redirect, but you can just copy and paste the link instead. Or just ignore it completely.

"We wouldn't just be looking at the stars...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we would be living in dem. "

But really, we'd probably actually have decent internet and flying cars. And robots. Can't forget the robots.

Re:"We wouldn't just be looking at the stars...

[V!NCENT]

Flying cars are totally possible, were it not for the fact that it's politically impossible to have everyone flying.

Re:"We wouldn't just be looking at the stars...

[Phrogman]

Ah so now the true motivation of the 1% is clear: They want flying cars. In order to do that they need to ensure that only they can fly them :P

Now it all makes much more sense :)

Re:"We wouldn't just be looking at the stars...

[V!NCENT]

Private jets come close?

Re:"We wouldn't just be looking at the stars...

[GameboyRMH]

There are many things closer to a flying car than a Lear-style private jet, down to roadable aircraft like the Terrafugia. Plenty of small planes that can fold up and fit on a trailer.

Apple would still patent whatever he had invented

[Anonymous Coward]

:) Except it would be called an iPod or an iPad, it would be a yeoldePod and yeoldePad. :)

What if?

[AngryDeuce]

What if the Black Death hadn't have occurred? What if Rome had never fallen? What if the Chinese had used gunpowder for more than fireworks? What if Christianity had never caught on? What if Native Americans had thrown off the colonists?

Until we start figuring out how to travel the multiverse, it's all subjective opinion...

Re:What if?

[jd2112]

What if the Black Death hadn't have occurred? What if Rome had never fallen? What if the Chinese had used gunpowder for more than fireworks? What if Christianity had never caught on? What if Native Americans had thrown off the colonists?

Until we start figuring out how to travel the multiverse, it's all subjective opinion...

What if there were no rhetorical questions?

Re:What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I were to ask what do you mean?

Re:What if?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if there were no rhetorical questions?

You would get an answer.

Re:What if?

[vlm]

Some of those questions are worth considering because they were single point sources. Presumably there existed one rat and one dead dude on a probably italian sailing ship who brought the plague to Europe... If a cat killed that rat with the flea holding the mutated virus, life would be quite different.

Some of those questions are kind of pointless, like the fall of rome. Rome was getting the giant flushing sound because of centuries of bad decisions and cultural failings, there is no "the" fall of rome. Read your Gibbon it arguably took 400 years of decay until arbitrarily you pick a fall date (all provinces abandoned in the west? no longer militarily relevant in the greater world? first sack of the city? no longer politically in charge of themselves? last distinctly roman leader killed and replaced by an outsider? this is like a hundred years range or more). Chinese and gunpowder, yeah that'll go really well, just replace most of Chinese cultural attitudes at that time and social mores, no big deal, just like brainwashing an entire empire simultaneously, how hard could that be?

The christianity thing was also seemingly inevitable in a "fall of rome" scenario, again, read your Gibbon without civil war and rebellion you're not getting a leader to convert.

Re:What if?

[datavirtue]

You have to have excess food, universities, a thriving and dynamic economy, stable liberal government, and a mobile work force to arrive at the means to produce technology on the level which we now have. If any of these factors suffer a setback you can forget it because it is created by people with time on their hands who don't have to worry about where they are going to live or what they are going to eat or if their family is going to be robbed in the night.

read the book

[Anonymous Coward]

The Difference Engine. We'd eventually get to the same place.

Re:read the book

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah I read the book but I reckon that scenario used too much energy, particularly once you started talking about GUIs and processors running at Ghz. We would have needed transistors then, just as we need photonic logic now to keep improving.

Re:read the book

[The Archon V2.0]

Eugh, must I? I really didn't like that book. It's been years, I admit, but all I remember of the story was complaints about pollution, complaints about bureaucracy, a MacGuffin everyone wanted, and a nonsensical epilogue. It felt like it was a modern-day thriller except with a thin coat of Ye Olde.

The middle third (it's split into three parts, with three different protagonists who don't interact much, so it's more like three short books) wasn't bad, but when it ended it felt like the story ended while there was still 150+ pages to read.

Re:read the book

[Anonymous Coward]

Improvement? I haven't seen any advances in computing in 10 years.
Machines get faster, But it's diminishing returns. More cycles eaten by idiotic programming
Being able to check you facebook page every 5 minutes is questionable progress.
All the important computing advances occurred in the 50's-70's

Re:read the book

[znerk]

The energy issue hasn't changed - we'll always need "just a little bit" more than we currently have. We could actually have tapped quite a few sources of reliable, renewable energy, it's just not economically viable to do so (at least, not while fossil fuels are still available at such (artificially) cheap rates).

Re:read the book

[MichaelSmith]

I mean that inside your computer, if you wanted to do all that we do with gears and wheels and such like, you would need a lot more energy than we currently use pushing electrons around.

Re:read the book

[veganboyjosh]

Isn't that the same argument for/against having a bigger purse/backpack? the more stuff you're able to carry, the more stuff you WILL carry, etc.

Re:read the book

[znerk]

I mean that inside your computer, if you wanted to do all that we do with gears and wheels and such like, you would need a lot more energy than we currently use pushing electrons around.

... and I mean that energy requirements are constantly fluctuating, and the current value is always "a little more than we have".

I'm not disagreeing with your statement that moving mechanical parts around would require more energy than our current computer technology requires, I'm simply stating that it wouldn't make any difference to the end user.

To use a car analogy, your statement implies that vehicles such as the HumVee would not exist, because they require more energy to push their wastefully large frames down the interstate.

Roman steam engine

[Nidi62]

I always wonder what the world would have been like had the Romans realized that the steam engine-primitive forms of which were used only in temples and in entertainment/toys- could be used as a form of locomotion. Hind sight really is always 20/20, and makes you wonder if we have anything today that we use that could be used for something we could never dream of.

Re:Roman steam engine

[Coldmoon]

They still would not have gone there as human labor was too cheap to spur investment in productivity. It is similar to what the Chinese have now - far cheaper to throw a 1,000 people at the problem then to create something that would reduce human labor in deference to a machine approach...

Re:Roman steam engine

[Hentes]

Romans didn't use steam engines because slaves were much cheaper. Which is the reason Babbage's would have been just a similar toy: just because something is technically feasible doesn't mean society is ready for it.

Re:Roman steam engine

[vlm]

Naah, they were more expensive. The problem is cultural, in that the leaders came more or less directly from military success, both against barbarians and in civil war. Military success implies capture of slaves. Coming up with a technological "solution" that expressly does not require the leaders most important product, is not gonna fly.

Its like trying to sell electric cars to Americans, no matter how much better they are than gas powered cars its culturally unacceptable. Must wait for the culture to slowly change, or suddenly die off, or be absorbed by a bigger more important culture, or otherwise be replaced from within, in both scenarios.

Imagine a housing solution for human beings that didn't involve big new york banks getting bigger. Possible? I think not. The technology doesn't prevent it, the culture does.

Similarly I don't know if victorian era england would really have found a wide ranging use for a mechanical computer given the culture of the time. If you need to add two numbers, don't you just hire a member of the lower classes? If you have to add a lot of them, for accounting purposes, you hire a lot of them... Its only when that starts to fail to scale decades later that you need a "solution"

Re:Roman steam engine

[datavirtue]

Hence free energy in our age. We would just kill each other in short order.

Re:Roman steam engine

[laejoh]

Well... this little movie bit would have taken longer, that's for sure!

Re:Roman steam engine

[u38cg]

Economics is a large part of it, but the bigger issue is they didn't have the metallurgy to build anything realistically useful.

Re:Roman steam engine

[whereiswaldo]

With slaves you've got parallelization down, but processing speed and inter-slave communication will become the bottleneck. You've also got to feed all these people which costs money.

This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[icebike]

The concept of huge mechanical computers fulfilling any purpose that seems hard for us to comprehend today.

Yet huge mechanical computers for specialized use were in actual deployment in several industries, not the least of which were "fire control computers" on US and British Battle Ships and Heavy Cruisers in the pre WWII era. These were initially fairly huge mechanical beasts that were originally developed around the time of the first World War, and which were initially totally mechanical in nature. By the Second World War they were electro-mechanical (solenoids and relays and stepper motors), and were enclosed in battle hardened enclosures.

Still 1920-to-1945 is hardly 1833, and the size and complexity of such devices taxed the manufacturing capabilities of the day, and the size and complexity of the problems they could solve was probably more easily worked out on paper than set (programmed) onto the machine.

Having worked out the concepts, one wonders how far Babbage could have progressed with a large budget and a larger machine shop to build his engines. There were precious few problems to which you could apply this technology in that day. But its a chicken and egg problem. Its hard to know what computations would have been attempted had such equipment been available. The calculation problems any society tackles tend to be near the limits of the computing capabilities available to the task.

A man before his time.

Re:This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[MichaelSmith]

Babbage was working at the bleeding edge of the engineering of his time. Engines which have been built to his designs, and using the machining available to him, barely work. The long chains of gears frequently jam. There is just too much slack built into his systems. Its not his fault, just a natural consequence of the way engineering was done when he was alive.

So no, I don't think it could have gone far.

Re:This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[Jane Q. Public]

Once a good use was found for it, the technology would have improved. It always has.

Re:This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[MichaelSmith]

Well okay so that gets us to The Diamond Age if you assume it has to use moving parts. Maybe working Babbage machines would have brought forward the development of electronics.

Re:This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[The Master Control P]

the size and complexity of the problems they could solve was probably more easily worked out on paper than set (programmed) onto the machine.

Obviously not or they'd not have gone to the difficulty of building machines which tax the limits of precision mechanical engineering to solve them. And part of what the mechanical FC computers did - stabilize the guns on a ship that's pitching and turning and rolling - can't be done with a precomputed table.

Re:This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[icebike]

And part of what the mechanical FC computers did - stabilize the guns on a ship that's pitching and turning and rolling - can't be done with a precomputed table.

Fire Control computers of that vintage did not attempt to stabilize the guns. That didn't come till much later, and never was used on very large bore guns (> 6inch). Simply too much mass to control. Instead the delay firing until the ship rolls or pitches thru the optimum fire point.

Re:This is where Steampunk died (or was born)

[Attila Dimedici]

The question is not how far Babbage could have progressed. It is pretty clear that he progressed in design nearly as far as the length of his life allowed. The question is, what would someone else have done with his ideas if he had stopped constantly trying to improve his designs and actually built a commercially successful machine (evidence suggests that he had a potentially commercially successful design that he abandoned in favor of developing a more advanced design--which would probably have been commercially successful as well if his investors had not gotten tired of waiting for him to perfect a device).

Two words for you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words for you: "Difference Engine". Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. That's what would happen if Babbage had succeeded.

Re:Two words for you...

[pmontra]

Exactly. We'd be stuck with billions of km of gears and transistors would be a fringe technology with no commercial future because of all the investments on the mechanical computing platform.

Re:Two words for you...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Analytical Engine 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Re:Two words for you...

[__aarzwb9394]

surely you mean mechanical boogaloo?

Not possible.

[artor3]

A Victorian computer revolution was not possible, as should be obvious to anyone who understands how computers work. Just think of how massive (and weak) computers were back in the days of vacuum tubes. Now imagine how massive, weak, and prone to break downs they'd be if they were made of clockwork. You'd have an entire warehouse filled with moving parts that might be equivalent to a digital watch... at least until one of the gears breaks. The technology simply didn't exist to make computing feasible.

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

You dumbfuck shit for brains. "Computing" wasn't always about how bloated you can make software to play games on a cell phone. Of course computing would have been possible.

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

And thats exactly why we gave up on compters in the 1940's and haven't bothered with them since..........

Re:Not possible.

[msobkow]

But a computing machine is actually far more straight-forward than the way an electronic computer works. It would be much slower, but I don't think it would be any more prone to breakdown than the vacuum tube machines were to burned-out tubes. Compare a mechanical desk-top adding machine of old to the earliest calculators -- they really weren't that much bulkier near the end of the era of the adding machines.

And the odds are, if you find one, the adding machine will still work.

Re:Not possible.

[melonman]

Also, the computer revolution really took off because computers became ever cheaper and easier to manufacture. The problem with Babbage's design was that a lifetime wasn't long enough to build one without CAD/CAM. So, even if he'd worked twice as fast and got the thing working, it would have been a one-off for another few decades.

If Babbage had succeeded, it would have sparked the "man as machine" line of thought that has changed so much in our society, and that could have changed the course of history in all sorts of ways. Maybe we would have had wetware trials rather than monkey trials. But I don't see mechanical computing ever getting past the early mainframe stage in terms of numbers of machines or direct relevance to the average person's life. The Babbage Clone industry would really have struggled.

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the Victorians that you are on about, I wouldn't bet against them being able to
do something with cogs and gears.

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if he had "succeeded", it's possible it could have kickstarted research into technologies to make it smaller. I'm not sure it would have actually changed much, except just moving everything forward 50-100 years.

But the whole reason he failed was because no one cared. A lot of things would have to have been different already; they simply didn't have a use for it. We needed to crack encrypted broadcast messages. Just think of where computers would be now if WWII either didn't happen or turned out differently.

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen a loom? Large machines, that took instructions from cards, to do things according to those instructions. They existed at the time. Very complex mechanical devices, and they could be HUGE and fragile.

The technology existed, and was even pretty well understood. It didn't happen because momentum hadn't caught up yet. Obviously, it didn't happen, but that in no way means in couldn't have happened.

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but just imagine how more awesome the first Jumbotron would have been had it used the macro-scale equivalent of DMS (Digital Mirror System), as these "displays" were in The Difference Engine...

Re:Not possible.

[artor3]

Those desktop adding machines came many decades later, and for good reason. Remember that interchangeable parts were just an idea being tossed around in France at that point, and it wasn't until the middle of the next century that a few Americans actually got it to work in practice (and it wasn't Eli Whitney... he just demonstrated the French idea to the US Congress; the actual innovation came later by some other people whose names I forget). Without interchangeable parts, such a large machine would be prohibitively expensive and very difficult to repair if it broke. And it's not as though interchangeable parts could have been developed sooner, because that innovation was based on the discovery of how to make harder steels for machining.

Technology is very interconnected. Everyone knows the quote about standing on the shoulders of giants. What we forget is that the giants themselves are actually just a bunch of people sitting on each other's shoulders.

Re:Not possible.

[artor3]

In the 1940s, transistors were right around the corner (being developed in the second half of the decade), so it's not like we had time to give up on them. Not to mention we were already past the industrial revolution. We had interchangeable parts, assembly line manufacturing, higher precision machining. And, of course, vacuum tubes. Interchangeable little devices that could be easily replaced when they broke, and were much easier to design with than clockwork. Oh, and on top of all of that, we had a major war in which both sides were searching for any technological miracle to give them an edge.

You're engaging in magical thinking. You can't bring one piece of technology back in time without all of the other bits of technology to support it. Babbage was never able to complete his device, and not because he was lazy. That was just one machine. It takes a lot more than that to have a "computer revolution".

Re:Not possible.

[rubycodez]

The 19th century looms aren't that impressive, card has hole to either allow or block a hook. To make Babbage engine you need long gear trains with very tight tolerances, totally out of the question

Re:Not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

The point I was trying to make was more alone the lines of "something is hard until it becomes not hard as a result of you being good at it"

Now if you would like to point me towards a "standard interchangeable gear" that would be very helpful, I've only ever seen ones defined by their tooth profile, pressure angle, diametral pitch and tooth count (at the minimum) and generally designed by an engineer to do a specific job. I also don't see any great reason why a relatively simple mechanical computer couldn't be used to run numerically controlled machine tools from punched tap, and turn out ever more precise and miniaturized versions of itself. This was essentially how we machined ever more accurate lead screws, which in turn could be used to produce more accurate machine tools to cu more accurate screws, and the idea of a punch tape driven manufacturing process was well established with the Jacquard loom. I also think you'll find the first electronic computers were assembled as "one off's" too.

I would also say (and I'm talking from personal experience here) gears done right tend to fail orders of magnitude less frequently than vacuum tubes, they don't have finicky little failure modes like "you turned it off and on too many times and the heater filament burned out" or "the glass envelope had a manufacturing defect and it leaked air" The syncromesh gearbox in your car could be expected to do 100k miles without a batting an eyelid, how many millions of "computing cycles" is that.

If anyone's engaged in "magical thinking" it's you for assuming you can legitimately attempt to transplant the developmental history of computers back a century, find it a poor fit, and throw your hand in the air crying "impossible"

Re:Not possible.

[Howitzer86]

Not to worry, they'd just send in the children to replace the broken gears. Maybe they wouldn't be the size of watch gears, but I can easily imagine warehouses full of moving parts. After all, we would come to have exactly that in the Industrial Revolution that was born out of the Victorian Age.

butterfly effect my a55

[Locutus]

you or I wouldn't be here to ask the question for one thing because the world would be an entirely different place. Probably much stranger weather-wise too since the industrial revolution would have occurred a century or so earlier and who knows what military(s) would have used it to the best of their ability.

LoB

Re:butterfly effect my a55

[Psion]

But the Industrial Revolution was in full swing by the 1830s. In many ways, Babbage's ideas were a product of that era. I don't think the world would be too terribly different a place than it is today. Perhaps, with proper error-free reference tables, science and engineering would have made a few more advances, but the complexity of all those moving parts in Babbage's Analytical Engine would have prevented something like Victorian PCs. I think the big change would have happened around the second World War, where ENIAC and similar computers would have been hybrid machines combining established mechanical computational constructs with vacuum-tube electronics to speed up calculations. Might the Germans have used aluminum calculating machines for more accurate V1 and V2 missiles? Could that have made a difference in the Space Race, or would that still have to wait for the weight-saving economy of the transistor and integrated circuits?

The thing to remember about technological progress is that invention is an interdependent process that involves more than just science and engineering, but politics, religion, and other social customs. Maybe the Analytical Engine would have gone nowhere until the invention of modern electronics. Or maybe minds like Tesla and industrialists like JP Morgan would have seized on the potential and changed everything. The most optimistic estimate would be that it would trigger a Victorian or at least Edwardian Internet era, with speech, information, and ideas flying around the planet at the speed of an automated telegraph. But computing with gears and the odd solenoid is a clumsy, tricky thing, and I can't help but think such ideas would have only tiny influences on our modern world.

Re:butterfly effect my a55

[The Master Control P]

Might the Germans have used aluminum calculating machines for more accurate V1 and V2 missiles? Could that have made a difference in the Space Race, or would that still have to wait for the weight-saving economy of the transistor and integrated circuits?

The V2's accuracy was set by the onboard integrating accelerometer, already a precision mechanical device, which integrated an error of some hundreds of meters over the course of its flight. No mechanical computer, in the sense of a gear-based version of the digital control computer, would've been fast enough so it would've still been a PIGA style device; There's a lot of room for the improvement of the PIGA over the V2's version so if mechanical integrators in general had been moved up the V2 would've likely been more accurate.

As for the Apollo flight computer, a very limited orbit-tracking version might have been possible but integrating error would have made it deeply suspect over such a long time period I think. In terms of all the other things the Apollo computer did in terms of attitude control and timing the firing of thrusters correctly, I doubt you could make a one cubic foot mechanical or electromechanical computer do that.

Re:butterfly effect my a55

[Psion]

As for the Apollo flight computer, a very limited orbit-tracking version might have been possible but integrating error would have made it deeply suspect over such a long time period I think. In terms of all the other things the Apollo computer did in terms of attitude control and timing the firing of thrusters correctly, I doubt you could make a one cubic foot mechanical or electromechanical computer do that.

I'm not suggesting that a mechanical computer could have replaced the Apollo flight computer. But if improvements in pre-calculated tables allowed ballistics and even rocketry to develop a little faster, mechanical computers might have come in handy for pre-Apollo rocket launches. What's the minimum computer functionality required to put a man into space? On the moon? And maybe some of the computing work could have been shifted away from the vehicle to a dedicated Flight Computations building on the ground.

Butterfly effect

[jones_supa]

If/when something bad happens in my life and, something awesome happens later after that, it makes me easier to accept the sucky occurance reasoned with the butterfly effect, as without it the great thing might not ever have happened. :)

Anyway, it's always amazing to think how the current state of world is a result of millions small things coming together. Without everything going exactly like this, even the probability of me existing would be extremely low.

The thing they missed was optics.

[Anonymous Coward]

They were this -> - close. Jewlers had green glass ovals they
looked into to rest their eyes. Part of the problem was that dip***t
Aristotle thought we saw by sending things OUT of our eyes.

Just think how much telescopes would have helped the navy or
the army on the Danube.

Had He Succeeeded...

[Scarletdown]

If Babbage had succeeded, then there would have been a programming language called Babbage, and a software store chain in malls called Ada's instead of the other way around.

Re:Apple would still patent whatever he had invent

[niw3]

The point is, we could be using tablets for a century by now, such patent wars would be a part of tech history, all related patents would be expired, of course. Also, DiffAppStore, or DAppStore, could be cool.

Storage not computing

[vlm]

Historically computing has never been a processing problem, but a storage problem. Or all computing, from embedded stuff to supercomputers, pretty much seems to revolve around turning a computation bound problem into a storage bound problem, and waiting for storage to improve so you can roll out faster processors to make use of it.

Try it yourself, if you have the skills. I had a pretty decent bitslice ALU design for a relay CPU down a total of 20 relays per bit slice, not just a wimpy bare adder but a pretty full featured design complete with comparator and roller/shifter unit. An 8 bit processor is well within my entertainment budget at a couple bucks per relay, and if I package each bitslice into something the size of a ream of paper, which is probably pretty pessimistic, the entire 8 bit CPU is only about the size of a box of bulk laserprinter paper. I figured for about $500 total all costs of all parts I can get a decent reliable relay based 8 bit CPU operational.

But a couple hundred bytes of relay based ram to run some "real programs" is way outside my budget, both financial, storage, and power. Even tradeoffs don't work, like using latching relays saves me considerable (cheap) power at a cost of roughly twice as much per bit. Inevitably you get into weird dynamic electrolytic capacitor designs, strange attempts at homemade core memory... Cheating and using modern sram isn't cool. Hundreds of latching relays at lets say $5 per bit isn't gonna fly if I "need" a K or so of memory to have fun, that would be $40K just of storage relays to say nothing of the address decode logic etc. Also that would be well in excess of 8000 relays for a K of memory, vs a mere 160 relays for the processor. About 80 times bigger. So that goes from a small box sized CPU to basically a room of my house.

This has interesting MTBF implications, in that any "non-trivial" relay computer is going to mostly fight memory breakdowns, not processor failures.

To an amateur, calculating is the hard part. To a pro, storage is where the real problem lies.

Re:Storage not computing

[Trepidity]

There are tradeoffs, depending on the problem. If you had several orders of magnitude faster processing, for some applications storage would become less of a bottleneck, because you could just recalculate a lot of data on the fly instead of storing it (the well-known time-space tradeoff). So in a sense storage is a bottleneck in those applications only because processing isn't fast enough--- meaning the bottleneck is processing when you look at it from another perspective.

Re:Storage not computing

[vlm]

Yup thats the problem with trying to replicate what amounts to a 1980 KIM-1 in relays.
The ancients ran in to the same dilema and their solution was wide word sizes like 60 bits. Thus you end up with simpler shorter programs and more calculation per cycle and less memory size required.
An 8 bit machine with a K of ram is what you get when memory and CPU are fast and space is cheap. What I'm used to, basically.
The ancients idea of large word length makes sense if memory is expensive. Also lots of CPU registers make sense if you're not going to multi-process or interrupt process anyway. Thats why my ratios of relays in the CPU vs memory is so far off from historical record of real historical relay computers.

What you're not seeing is I'm talking about primary storage, you're talking about bulk secondary storage. If I have all day I can use papertape or punch cards for bulk storage. There is no way to process ten times faster than storage, unless you mean "bulk storage" like hard drive space. I'm talking about a limit very much like cache memory. You can't out process your cache, at some fundamental level the output of an adder (or whatever) needs to be stuck "somewhere" no matter how fast it can add...

Re:Storage not computing

[Trepidity]

Yeah, there's some amount of primary storage that you can't do without, but it's not entirely fixed. In a lot of scientific-computing apps, for example, the trend over the past decade has been towards ripping out things like lookup tables, because they aren't worth the RAM or L1/L2 cache space: it's cheaper to just re-calculate sin(whatever) every time you need it than to store a big sin table, or recalculate pi to 10,000 digits instead of storing it as a giant constant, which didn't used to be the case. Occasionally you might even avoid caching reusable intermediate results and just re-calculate them every time you need them, if calculating them is fast enough.

Re:Storage not computing

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't used to be

Try "wasn't always" instead.

Re:Storage not computing

[tibit]

I'm mostly with you on that one. Latching-vs-nonlatching relays are a big trade-off. You can get SPDT non-latching relays, or even DPDT ones, for less than a dollar in large quantity. But any significant quantity of them will need busbars for power distribution...

Re:Storage not computing

[Anonymous Coward]

In a lot of scientific-computing apps, for example, the trend over the past decade has been towards ripping out things like lookup tables, because they aren't worth the RAM or L1/L2 cache space

I hope you're kidding.

Occasionally you might even avoid caching reusable intermediate results and just re-calculate them every time you need them, if calculating them is fast enough.

What you're saying makes absolutely no sense unless your processor is an order of magnitude faster than your RAM, or grotesquely multi-core.

RAM has been getting cheaper over the past decade, not more expensive. Even if RAM was expensive, non-trivial math optimizations hardly use more than 1K in most cases, because hand entered constants are typically limited by needing to be human-intelligible.

Re:Storage not computing

[vlm]

I'm mostly with you on that one. Latching-vs-nonlatching relays are a big trade-off. You can get SPDT non-latching relays, or even DPDT ones, for less than a dollar in large quantity. But any significant quantity of them will need busbars for power distribution...

Ah for a non-latching design, about half the coils will be drawing power all the time, and you need to size for all the coils energized all the time, which gets kind of expensive. An eighth amp here and an eighth amp there, no big deal, but 8000 memory cell relays adds up to a cool KiloAmp, at 12 volts thats 12 kilowatts of heat in the coils. A big problem.

But a latching design inherently does not require the memory cell coils to be energized all the time, just a pulse at write cycle time, thats the whole point of latching. So the average current draw of a 8K memory unit with latching relays is almost entirely in the address decode, and with my sneakyness I think I could get that down to a couple amps at most.

So a latching design uses "lamp cord" size wiring, but a non-latching design would very much resemble the power system from one of Ma Bell's central offices.

Re:Storage not computing

[tibit]

That's what I meant by "busbars for power distribution" :) You can of course use 48V coils to get lowest current at a safe voltage, but the dissipation will remain. And 48V small form factor relays aren't cheap. You could cheat and use optomos SSRs, but that's really aiming low ;)

It could be possible, perhaps, to have the "latching" part done a-la core memory: store charge in a "cell" made up of a capacitor storing enough charge to energize the coil momentarily -- long enough to latch a relay electrically (NO contact powering the coil). Let's see if it's feasible.

Say we use TYCO's TSC series relay. 6mA @ 24V for the coil, 5ms to operate so say we need it to stay, say, on for 20ms on capacitor charge alone. Final discharge voltage could be as low as 18V per the specs. We're discharging the cap through a 4kOhm resistor (24V/6mA). So a 30uF capacitor is plenty enough if we're starting from 24V, it'd be still around 20V after 20ms. I've used this handy tool. To keep refresh rates low, you could use a much larger capacitor.

So -- I'd say that a fairly small capacitor may be all that's needed to implement memory. You'd have row/column relays to connect the cap to the coil of the sense relay, and then that relay would latch itself electrically. They did have electrolytic caps with those specs back then (tens of of uF at 35V V.W.). The reads aren't even destructive -- the sense relay latches when the coil gets a kick from the stored charge, this energizes its coil from 24V using a N.O. contact that just closed. This also recharges the capacitor if there's no isolation diode between the capacitor and the coil. As soon as the row/column relays disconnect the capacitor is out of the circuit, fully re-charged.

If you had a full column of sense relays per each plane of memory, then refresh could be very fast as well. The circuitry for refresh (apart from refresh counter etc) is simple: one isolation relay per row, one sense relay per row, that's it. Nothing else is needed. The isolation relays close connecting the row outputs to sense relays, sense relays maintain the state of their capacitor and recharge it. If you wish, you could use the column of sense relays as the readout relays as well, then the isolation relays would be on the outside of the memory plane rather than on the inside -- they'd be connecting the memory to whatever bus it feeds.

You need one capacitor per bit, so 16 kbits worth of "RAM" would cost you approx. $500 for the capacitors (assuming you'd use through hole ESH476M035AE3AA from Kemet, those go for $0.03249 US each at 16k quantity from DigiKey). If you'd want it to be a 16 bit memory, then you have 16 planes of 1kbit each, organized 32x32 bits. Column select relays can be shared between planes, so you need 32 relays for that. Each plane needs 32 row sense relays for refresh and readout, and 32 row select relays for the output. So you need 32+32+2 relays per plane, or 16*66=1056 relays. That reduces your relay cost by a factor of 16, and reduces your power consumption even further since at most about half of these relays would be on at any given time -- you only select one row at a time for output. You'd also need some relays for the refresh counter. You could of course have 8 planes of 32x64 bits for an 8 bit memory, and then you'd need 576 relays (64 per plane for rows + 8 per plane for shared column selects).

The relays go for about $1.176 in 1000+, again from DigiKey. I'm sure you could optimize the relay count further, perhaps by using diode switches. You'd need to use some diodes anyway, for things like decoding row/column selects from the address bus and from the refresh counter, etc. If you'd hook up rows to the least significant address bits you could probably forgo a refresh counter and just assume that enough straight-line code gets executed that all rows will

Too early for production use

[Animats]

Much as I like the steampunk concept, Babbage's machine was at the upper end of what was buildable as an expensive prototype. Bear in mind that even consistently-good, moderately priced steel wasn't available until the 1880s. That's why fine machinery was made of brass until the 20th century.

The commercial history of mechanical calculators is not what you'd expect. Leibniz built the first mechanical multiplier in 1694. The commercial version, the "Arithmometer", wasn't produced until 1851. (It took a very long time to commercialize technology before there was industrial infrastructure.) Adding machines came later, because an adding machine is only a marginal improvement over an abacus, but a multiplier is a huge win.

The first high-volume mechanical arithmetic device was the cash register. When, in 1884, cash registers first got tape printers, for the first time merchants had some real mechanical bookkeeping assistance. By then, good steel was available, and stamped parts could be made in volume. That's the point at which something like Babbage's machine might first have been a commercial success.

Which it was. Hollerith's first punched card machines were used for the 1880 census. The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company manufactured Hollerith machines commercially. The CTR became the International Tabulating and Recording Company, which became International Business Machines, which is today's IBM.

By 1880, there was enough manufacturing infrastructure to make stuff, and there was continuous year to year progress in mechanical calculation. The peak in purely mechanical systems was probably the Burroughs Sensimatic, in 1953, which was essentially a spreadsheet program made out of gears. IBM tabulators were more advanced, but they were electromechanical.

Re:Too early for production use

[vlm]

Bear in mind that even consistently-good, moderately priced steel wasn't available until the 1880s. That's why fine machinery was made of brass until the 20th century.

As an amateur machinist guy I can assure you that fine machinery was made of brass because steel/iron/etc was a nightmare to machine with the tools of the day, but brass is OK, not so labor intensive.

Bulk steel was actually pretty cheap. Not cheap enough to make a bridge out of it, but cheap enough to fill the world with rifles and swords. Before 1880 steel was too expensive to make a steel bridge over every river, or a steel locomotive rail thru every little two horse town, or a steel computer in every house, or a steel computer based internet, which is just as well because they didn't have the proper carbides and HSS to machine it anyway at any affordable rate.

Brass was, is, and probably always will be terribly expensive but it machines and wears (self lubricates, to an extent) like a dream. And the finish is quite attractive and simple, unlike steel or aluminum finishes. To this day, the amateur machinist guys make homemade steam engines out of brass, not steel, if they can afford it, anyway. I certainly prefer to work with brass. There are some issues with the cutting angles on lathe tools etc but its all really no big deal.

Brass is much closer in cost to being a precious metal than it is to being a structural metal. Always has been. This explains the fascination brass holds with the local meth user population, a little pocket sized outside water hose fitting is worth darn near as much as a small iron sewer/drain grate at the recycler.

Re:Too early for production use

[pmontra]

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism was not a general purpose computer but as a computing machine pre dates any known device.

Oh no, not this again.

[Ga_101]

Babbage was not "a man before his time". He didn't need more money. He didn't need a larger machine shop. He blew it!

He had the money.
The people in 1800's Britain knew a good thing when they saw it. And when small prototypes were demonstrated the British Government committed to build the difference engine. And guess what, they wanted to use it for gunnery on ships! They invested *big*. How much? One fully kited out battleship's worth. One of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860) (more or less). That is a huge amount of money.

The skills were available.
Have a look at a British clock from this period. Very intricate work and at a lot smaller scale than Babbage required. Sure, what he was doing was on a large scale, but the skills and tools were out there. Indeed, Babbage teamed up with them and had the money to do it.

But he committed the cardinal sin. Babbage was forever changing the design. Yes Mr Babbage, your analytical engine idea is nice but we are paying you for the difference engine! He could not stay focused to build what was paid for and required. Falling out with the machinists capable of building it hardly helped maters. He did not deliver. As a result he blew not only his own reputation but that of the whole idea, killing it for the best part of a century. That is how bad he was.

You can be the most talented man in the world, but if you are so disorganised and uncivil that nobody wants to work for you it is all for nothing. A lesson we can all still learn form.

Re:Oh no, not this again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Babbage = Sheldon

Re:Oh no, not this again.

[Anonymous Coward]

So he invented scope creep!

Re:Oh no, not this again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Real artists ship!

Re:Oh no, not this again.

[Tablizer]

He perhaps should have sold the designs and have somebody more focused and reliable work on them. The success then would allow him to design the A.E.

But it is typical that the best dreamers are often the worse deliverers. A mind hard-wired to wonder into the future is not a good mind to focus on the present.

Analog Computers not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

A Victorian computer revolution was not possible, as should be obvious to anyone who understands how computers work.

Analog Computers of which the transmission in a car is an example.

Not really

[Cyberax]

The engines they've used (basically a sphere with a couple of nozzles) had very poor efficiency. They were not really suitable for anything but simple toys. They'd have to invent a lot of new technology to make real piston steam engines. Never mind steam turbines.

That's the same problem as with Babbage's engine.

then the holocaust would have been complete?

[Anonymous Coward]

im not sure about this, but here is my initial gut reaction (based on Nazi Census by Goth and Ali, and IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black).

Every last Jew would have been listed in a computer somewhere. There would have been no 'mistakes'.
Renee Carmille wouldn't have been able to sabotage the Nazi census in France. There would have been no problems with supplies of nice paper to the largest punch-card user in the world - the Nazi Party bureaucracy.
Every country would have been like a souped-up version of what happened in the Netherlands, where some duty-bound bureaucrat aided the nazis by making sure that his machines performed exactly to specification.
Nobody would have been able to slip through any cracks - every last hole could have been plugged.
And all the records could have been destroyed with some simple hard-disk wipes, leaving no evidence.

Re:then the holocaust would have been complete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse still, we might not have been able to crack the code which in a large way led to the end of the war.

Sci-fi "The Difference Engine"

[lkcl]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine - by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson is a fascinating and complex exploration of exactly this concept: namely that Babbage succeeded. The key historical difference - the premise of the book - is that England's backing of the American Civil War succeeded, due to cryptography in part. Towards the end of the book it's made clear that the continued war between France and England has turned "cold" and thus much effort is dedicated to sneaking obfuscated "divide by zero" algorithms into the opposing side's Difference Engines. this book is one of the only sci-fi books (out of over 500 that i've read) that i actually found it hard to understand even 50% of what was going on. still made a damn good story, though.

Re:Sci-fi "The Difference Engine"

[Anonymous Coward]

Much like Babbage himself that book was a convoluted chunk not worth finishing. Seriously if you are considering reading this book skip it. It is *garbage*. Characters would come and go and have very little to drive the plot along. It is *bad*. It took a good premis and threw it away for who the hell knows what. But the idea of the book is cool. The execution is not so much.

Babbage *could* have done it. He had the money and resources. He just didnt have a good PM to say 'are you done yet? and what does it mean to be DONE?'...

Automatic Telephone Exchange

[InterGuru]

The Automatic Telephone Exchange was patented in the 1890s and was available in the 1900s. The relays could have been rewired as an electromechanical computer, as was done in 1943 on the Z3 computer .

No one thought of it.

It would make a very good Star Trek time travel ep

[master_p]

The Enterprise travels back in time, assists Babbage in finishing his analytical engine, and mankind gets warp drive 150 years before Cochrane did.

In the mean time, Hitler fails to capture power in Germany, thanks to the internet.

Stalin fails to rise to power, because people are quickly informed via their phones about his actions.

etc

the true visionary

[Anonymous Coward]

hero of alexandria had him beat my about 2000 years

What if Babbage had succeeded ?

[eulernet]

He would have probably created the first bug !

Well, for one thing...

[Black Parrot]

Your cell phone would use gears...

If Babbage had succeeded...

[As_I_Please]

He would have formed a crime-fighting team with Ada Lovelace.

Re:It would make a very good Star Trek time travel

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the prime directive mean NOTHING to you??

The Babbage effect

[Anonymous Coward]

But he committed the cardinal sin. Babbage was forever changing the design. Yes Mr Babbage, your analytical engine idea is nice but we are paying you for the difference engine! He could not stay focused to build what was paid for and required. Falling out with the machinists capable of building it hardly helped maters. He did not deliver. As a result he blew not only his own reputation but that of the whole idea, killing it for the best part of a century. That is how bad he was.

So what you're saying is, the Osborne Effect is misnamed?

YEAH, IT'S CALLED THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE

[Latinhypercube]

YEAH, IT'S CALLED THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine

Re:It would make a very good Star Trek time travel

[Anonymous Coward]

The Enterprise travels back in time, assists Babbage in finishing his analytical engine, and mankind gets warp drive 150 years before Cochrane did.

In the mean time, Hitler fails to capture power in Germany, thanks to the internet.

Stalin fails to rise to power, because people are quickly informed via their phones about his actions.

etc

People were informed of Stalin's actions quite well through the existing newspaper system. Most people believed accurate news of Soviet atrocities to be Capitalist propaganda until Soviet records were opened. Alleging that the USSR did anything wrong got you branded as a "reactionary", what would today be called a "neocon". Stalin originally rose to power by convincing enough people to overthrow the revolutionary Socialist government, so his rise to power began with the public support of Russians. Wider and faster access to information would not have mattered if people were predisposed against believing or caring about what they read.

The Internet might have made Hitler more successful. He already had support from desperate people looking for any leader willing to stand against Stalin. He had support from the peace movement in the US and UK which called for doing nothing to stop him. In the US, he had support from celebrities Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. The UK's diplomatic corps were thoroughly turned to Hitler's side and advised improving trade and cultural relations with Nazi Germany would soften them; Neville Chamberlain notoriously took their advice but also built up the army against his diplomats' advice that it would be seen as a provocation. Hitler's Arabic radio broadcasts inspired Arab policy for the next sixty years and counting. Given the communications technology of the Internet, Hitler would have used it to promote his allegations of Czech atrocities against the human rights of Germans in the occupied Sudetenland, of Zionist planners promoting the West's wars for their own benefit, of rich Zionists controlling the economy and oppressing the working class, and of the Christians not in his Deutch Christen movement being Zionists and not really Christian. The Nazis were so influential without the Internet that some of these themes are still popular today. Imagine how it would be if Germany were funding Nazi activists to organize online to gain moderator control of popular websites like Wikipedia so they could ban users for arguing against any of these points.

wat if my pee pee was an inch longer

[Anonymous Coward]

ur mom would still complain ;)

-HasHie

Economic Justification?

[Tablizer]

The thing is, a room full of humans can compute also, perhaps aided by simpler mechanical calculators. Redundant calculations could be done to reduce and detect errors. Nobody has shown an economic argument for Babbage's monstrosity being that it would be damned expensive to build at the time and require lots of maintenance.

Without Boolean Logic?

[Ramin_HAL9001]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but I think the biggest deficiency of Babbage's design was the base-10 numbering paradigm. Sure, he had the computer architecture down, to what we would now call the Von Neumann architecture, with the load, compute, store instructions. But making it all work in base-10 was incredibly messy, and I would think that is mostly why it was so difficult for him to implement.

It was not until 1854 that George Bool invented what we now call Boolean Algebra.

Boolean logic allowed us to simplify computing circuitry, improving it's efficiency and size. Take a look at this famous YouTube video, it shows a mechanical calculator built with marbles, where a marble indicates a one and no marble indicates a zero. AND and OR gates are incredibly simple lever mechanisms, and it is powered by gravity and the weight of the marbles. What if Babbage had thought to use marbles and base-2 numbering instead of gears and base-10 numbering to do computations? He couldn't have because Bool's idea had not been thought of until some 30 years after his death, and even after that, it was not until Alan Turing (120 years after Babbage) that anyone was clever enough to realize that Boolean logic, as any other logic, could be used to program a computer. Before Turing, Boolean logic was more or lest a reasoning language for testing the logical soundness of true/false propositions.

So, architecturally, Babbage was ahead of his time, and perhaps had his idea succeeded, it may have encouraged research and development leading to the use of Boolean logic in computing much earlier. But that wasn't the case. It is fun to think of what may have happened though: we may have seen immense computing factories powered by mills which lifted grounded marbles into a giant bin above the factory, and all of that weight would filter through the mechanisms of the computer to produce results. Such a thing would have been unbearably noisy, but fast, simple, easily reparable, and effective. And it would have continued that way until someone thought of using electrical charges instead of marbles.

In all, I think if Babbage's design had succeeded, it may have made the computer revolution happen 30 or 40 years earlier, in which case, I would have been born in the the mostly ignorant generation of kids comprising the social-networking and internet revolution, and not in the more down-to-earth generation of 8-bit gaming, Q-BASIC and assembler-programming, personal computer revolution folk.

Re:Without Boolean Logic?

[dkf]

In all, I think if Babbage's design had succeeded, it may have made the computer revolution happen 30 or 40 years earlier, in which case, I would have been born in the the mostly ignorant generation of kids comprising the social-networking and internet revolution, and not in the more down-to-earth generation of 8-bit gaming, Q-BASIC and assembler-programming, personal computer revolution folk.

It's not clear to me that communications technology would have advanced any faster even with computers being more advanced. A lot of the key parts are really optical and follow on from quantum mechanics and semiconductors. There's not much point in trying to invent WLAN when the network backbone can only support 8kbps connections, and mobile phones can't be mechanical (well, not without some seriously exotic techniques that are we are currently only looking at the edges of).

Re:Without Boolean Logic?

[findoutmoretoday]

Having used base 10 12 60 ... mechanical devices sometimes steered by base 2 (or pulse) based electrical systems,  I seriously doubt that mechanical systems are at their best in base 2.  Where I fully agree is the " been born in the the mostly ignorant generation of kids" part,  this thread is a prime example of blissful collective ignorance, although this is probably common to any age and time.

omg no porn

[SluttyButt]

A Victorian computer revolution? OMG! I would have never heard of porn.

Re:omg no porn

[findoutmoretoday]

<quote><p>A Victorian computer revolution? OMG! I would have never heard of porn.</p></quote>

The Victorians more or less invented porn,  a feat lost to the more idealistic pin-up annex photoshop generations.

Re:omg no porn

[SluttyButt]

oh really? lets get hold of the queen's yellowed photographs.

Binary was really the great leap...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had heard that part of his problem was the accurate machining required to manufacture his designs. His designs for the machines were based on base-10 number system so the gears had to have at least 10 states, but what if he had thought to use binary numbers. The gearing would have been simplified immensely and probably could have been made with the technology of the times.

This was similar to the insight that was made in early computers to use only 2 electrical states instead of 10 states, this of course turned out to be a wonderful decision.

There's already a book on this

[Anonymous Coward]

It kicked off the Steam punk fiction in the 1990's "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson (of cyber-punk fame) and Bruce Sterling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine

Re:It would make a very good Star Trek time travel

[master_p]

It means as much to me as it did to Star Trek writers...i.e. nothing.