Computer History Lecture Series

"It will not slice a pineapple:
The Construction of Charles Babbage's Calculating Engine"

Doron Swade
Senior Curator of Computing
Science Museum, London, U.K.

Wednesday, March 3, 1999, 4:15 p.m.
Stanford University, NEC Auditorium,
Gates Computer Science Building, Room B03.

 

Doron Swade beside Babbage's Calculating Engine

at the Science Museum, London.

Charles Babbage is widely celebrated as the first pioneer of the computer. The designs for his vast mechanical calculating engines are one of the startling intellectual achievements of the last century. Babbage is equally famous for two things: he invented computers, and he failed to build them. The reasons for his failures are still hotly debated today and the tale of his woes has become a modern parable. But in the absence of a demonstrably working machine, doubt has clouded his reputation.

Was Babbage an impractical dreamer, or a designer of the highest calibre? Could his engines have been built in the previous century, and if so, would they have worked? The Science Museum built a complete Babbage engine from original designs in time for the bicentenary in 1991 of Babbage's birth. This presentation will describe the project and how it has revised historical perceptions of the great inventor.

Biographical Note:

Doron Swade is the Senior Curator for Computing and Information Technology at the Science Museum in London. He is an electronics engineer and an historian of computing. He has published widely on the history of computing and on curatorship, and written three books, two on Charles Babbage and one, co-authored, on the Information Age. His fourth book, The Cogwheel Brain, is due out in October this year. Swade masterminded the construction of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, which was completed at the Science Museum on the bicentenary of Babbage's birth in 1991. Swade's book The Dream Machine, was the companion text to the BBC/PBS-series The Machine That Changed The World, information available here. Additional writings by Swade include The Digital Superhighway and the Curator, and The Problems of Software Conservation.