Analytical Engine

An Analytical Engine is a General-Purpose Computer that designed by Charles Babbage that integrates a memory and incorporates an arithmetic logic unit, control flow based on conditional branching and loops.

• AKA: Baggage's Analytical Engine.
• Context:
  • It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's Difference Engine,
• Example(s):
  • Baggage's Analytical Engine Web Emulator,
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Difference Engine,
  • Ludgate's Analytical Engine,
  • Zuse Z1.
• See: Mechanical Computer, Electronic Digital Computation, Computer History Museum, Turing-Complete, Turing Machine.

---

---

References

2017

• (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine Retrieved:2017-10-28.
  • The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete. In other words, the logical structure of the Analytical Engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era. Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until the 1940s that the first general-purpose computers were actually built, more than a century after Babbage had proposed the pioneering Analytical Engine in 1837.

---