James Baquet I have mentioned the ease of making photographs using a smart phone. But the phone itself is the result of something that was invented at nearly the same time as the heliograph: the 1837 “analytical engine” of Charles Babbage, the forerunner to today’s computers. Babbage was a bit of a character, often shaking a metaphorical finger at the most unusual “nuisances” — the amount of street noise caused by “organ grinders,” for instance, or the rolling of hoops by boys (for sport) that led to equestrian accidents. There were of course no electronics in Babbage’s day. The “computers” that he invented were mechanical, analogous to the old calculators and cash registers that had to be activated by a hand crank. (Remember, the root of the word “computer” is “compute,” meaning “to perform mathematical functions” — addition, subtraction, and so on.) His first such device, the “difference engine,” was meant to determine the values of polynomial functions. It was never completed, due to a falling out over costs with the engineer he hired to build it. If finished, the machine would have been 2.4 meters tall and weigh 13,600 kilograms! His next invention, the true ancestor of today’s computers, was the more complex machine called the “analytical engine.” This would use cards with holes strategically punched in them for the input of data — a strategy that was still widely used throughout much of the 20th century for data entry. This device, like the difference engine, was never completed, though Babbage continued to tinker with his design until his death in 1871. Invention seldom occurs in a vacuum. Modern historians give increased credit to the contributions of Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician and the daughter of the renowned English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. Lovelace saw the potential of the machine to go beyond mere calculation into other applications. She also published the first algorithm meant for use by such a machine. She is sometimes called “the first computer programmer,” though there was as yet no such thing as a programming language. Vocabulary: Which word above means: 1. an odd or unusual person 2. involving horses 3. an ordered set of instructions to transform data input into output 4. fool around, work idly 5. a mathematical expression such as, for example, f(x)=3x-2 6. figurative 7. something that led to something else 8. disagreement, argument 9. scolding 10. empty space | 