The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician Charles Babbage.

Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding.

Construction of this machine was never completed ; Babbage had conflicts with his chief engineer, Joseph Clement, and ultimately the British government withdrew its funding for the project.

This machine was built using materials and engineering tolerances that would have been available to Babbage, quelling the suggestion that Babbage's designs could not have been produced using the manufacturing technology of his time.

Despite this, Babbage's work fell into historical obscurity and the Analytical Engine was unknown to builders of electro-mechanical and electronic computing machines in the 1930s and 1940s when they began their work, resulting in the need to re-invent many of the architectural innovations Babbage had proposed.

The encoding of data by discrete bits was used in the punched cards invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon ( 1732 ), developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard ( 1804 ), and later adopted by Semen Korsakov, Charles Babbage, Hermann Hollerith, and early computer manufacturers like IBM.

The world's first computer printer was a 19th century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine.

However, the possibility of actually constructing a conscious machine was probably first discussed by Ada Lovelace, in a set of notes written in 1842 about the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, a precursor ( never built ) to modern electronic computers.

Charles Babbage, FRS ( 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871 ) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer.

However after the obituary appeared, a nephew wrote to say that Charles Babbage was born one year earlier, in 1791.

The parish register of St. Mary's Newington, London, shows that Babbage was baptised on 6 January 1792, supporting a birth year of 1791.

Babbage's father, Benjamin Babbage, was a banking partner of the Praeds who owned the Bitton Estate in Teignmouth.

His parents ordered that his " brain was not to be taxed too much " and Babbage felt that " this great idleness may have led to some of my childish reasonings.

" The second was an Oxford tutor from whom Babbage learned enough of the Classics to be accepted to Cambridge.

As a student, Babbage was also a member of other societies such as the Ghost Club, concerned with investigating supernatural phenomena, and the Extractors Club, dedicated to liberating its members from the madhouse, should any be committed to one.

What Babbage did not, or was unwilling to, recognize was that the government was interested in economically produced tables, not the engine itself.

The other issue that undermined the government ’ s confidence in the difference engine was Babbage had moved on to an analytical engine.

Babbage was able to take advantage of ideas developed for the analytical engine to make the new difference engine calculate more quickly while using fewer parts.

In 2000, the printer which Babbage originally designed for the difference engine was also completed.

Its first meeting was held at York in 1831 ; and Brewster, along with Babbage and Sir John F. W. Herschel, had the chief part in shaping its constitution.

Following Babbage, although unaware of his earlier work, was Percy Ludgate, an accountant from Dublin, Ireland.

Babbage appreciated that the machine was capable of great feats of calculation, including primitive logical reasoning, but he did not appreciate that no other machine could do better.

In 1823, the British government gave Babbage ₤ 1700 to start work on the project.

Charles Babbage was known to have broken a variant of the cipher as early as 1854 ; however, he didn't publish his work.

Babbage started work on his analytical engine in 1834, " in less than two years he had sketched out many of the salient features of the modern computer.

The work of Pierre Jaquet-Droz predates that of Charles Babbage by decades.

He was deeply sceptical of the work of Charles Babbage and of his ability to deliver a working Difference Engine or Analytical Engine.

* Oral history interview with Harry M. Markowitz, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota-Markowitz discusses his development of portfolio theory, sparse matrices, and his work at the RAND Corporation and elsewhere on simulation software development ( including computer language SIMSCRIPT ), modeling, and operations research.

The recognised excellence of Clement's machine tools and his skill in precision engineering led to him being employed by Charles Babbage in 1823 to work on his project to design and build his mechanical calculating device, the difference engine.

The high prices of his large precision tools led to a falling out with Babbage ( at the time workmen were allowed to keep any tools made by them in the course of their work ), but his skill and the quality of his products kept him in employment for many years.

He was interested in astronomy, being a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in computers, as is shown by a letter of his to Charles Babbage, dated March 23, 1836, among the Babbage manuscripts at the British Library, returning some logarithm tables that he had borrowed and adding " How happy I shall be when I can see such a work verified and enlarged by your divine machine ".

In the novel, the Society uses the Babbage engines along with a statistical science called Cliology to predict and manipulate future history.

* Oral history interview with Isaac Levin Auerbach Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota.

* Oral history interview with Carel Sellenraad Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota.

* Oral history interview with Ovid M. Smith Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota.

Considered a " father of the computer ", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.

Babbage, Herschel, and Peacock were also close friends with future judge and patron of science Edward Ryan.

* Oral history interview with John M. M. Pinkerton, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

In response to the claim in Whewell's treatise that " We may thus, with the greatest propriety, deny to the mechanical philosophers and mathematicians of recent times any authority with regard to their views of the administration of the universe ", Charles Babbage published what he called The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, A Fragment.

* Oral history interview with Martin Hellman, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

* Oral history interview with Stephen Crocker, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

* Oral history interview with Ralph E. Griswold — Griswold discusses development of SNOBOL Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

* Oral history interview with Terry Allen Winograd Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

* Oral history interview with Paul A. Strassmann Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

* Oral history interview with William Crowther Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

* Oral history interview with Stephen Cook at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

* Oral history interview with C. A. R. Hoare at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

It was during his time as an undergraduate that he became friends with Charles Babbage and George Peacock.

* Neil R. Lincoln with 18 Control Data Corporation ( CDC ) engineers on computer architecture and design, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.