Computer History

A Different Machine
A California museum boots up the world’s first computer.

More than 150 years before the Mac and the PC declared war, a relatively unknown English mathematician named Charles Babbage drew up a blueprint for the world’s first calculating machine. Unfortunately, he never put it to work. Now, thanks to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, visitors can do the honors for him until May 2009.

Babbage first conceived of the idea for the Difference Engine in 1821, when he imagined a system that could calculate basic equations. Due primarily to a lack of funding, Babbage never found out if his idea worked. Neither did anyone else—until 1985. That’s when engineers at London’s Science Museum decided to build one of Babbage’s later concepts, the Difference Engine No. 2, as a way to celebrate the machine’s 200th birthday. It took them 17 years of painstaking work. When they finally turned the hand crank, the 8,000-part machine whirred to life and successfully solved an equation.

Word spread fast. Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s former chief technology officer, commissioned one of the engines for his personal collection and loaned it to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, which is near San José. If you have any trouble finding it, just listen for the signature rumble. Every crank results in a series of clicks so loud they can be heard throughout the museum.

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You’ve read about the first calculating machine. Now get a look at the first electronic computer, the ENIAC, developed at the University of Pennsylvania. 

PBS traced the history of the computer all the way back to the abacus in the documentary Triumph of the Nerds.

Mary Lou Jepsen, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, recently discussed the future of computers.