Recently I've been educating myself on the history of computers, starting back with the first calculating machines on up through Charles Babbage's Difference and Analytical Engines and to the electromechanical computers of the 1930s and 1940s.
Babbage really was very far ahead of his time. However, I've become somewhat more fascinated with the analytical engine design by a mostly forgotten man named Percy Ludgate. Here's a site dedicated to his idea. Not much is known about the man himself.
I find electronic computers hard enough to understand, when they work by clockwork, that just makes my understanding all the harder. Just because the technology is older doesn't make it simpler.
I've been trying to figure out if Ludgate's engine would have been capable of doing everything Babbage's could have, if they both would have been built. Babbage's would have been programmable, digital and Turing complete, a century before it really happened.
If anyone can help me understand these inventions, it would be much appreciated.
Babbage really was very far ahead of his time. However, I've become somewhat more fascinated with the analytical engine design by a mostly forgotten man named Percy Ludgate. Here's a site dedicated to his idea. Not much is known about the man himself.
I find electronic computers hard enough to understand, when they work by clockwork, that just makes my understanding all the harder. Just because the technology is older doesn't make it simpler.
I've been trying to figure out if Ludgate's engine would have been capable of doing everything Babbage's could have, if they both would have been built. Babbage's would have been programmable, digital and Turing complete, a century before it really happened.
If anyone can help me understand these inventions, it would be much appreciated.
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