(Finally) building the Analytical Engine

A team at the Science Museum in London is setting out the build Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. The project is expected to take 10 years; the hope is that the process will determine whether Babbage actually conceived of the first programmable computer, a hundred years before Alan Turing offered the modern form of the idea. Building the Analytical Engine is complicated by the fact that Babbage left many different blueprints, rather than a single perfected plan.

The article outlines the futuristic ideas of Babbage and Ada Lovelace, and the 100-year gap separating their writings with Turing’s work in the 1930s.