The Analytical Engine

This section contains notes about a mechanical computer that Charles Babbage intended to be able to calculate any analytical function. The most detailled single description is found in the publication by L.F. Menabrea, published in 1842, and translated by Lady Ada Augusta Lovelace from the French original, significantly extended by appendices Note A to Note G. A facsimile scan is available at archive.org; here is a version without background: menabrea_lovelace1843_analyticalengine.pdf. All refereces to the text should use the page numbers of the original text.

Information on the only surviving piece of hardware is found in the section on the Trial model from 1871.

The rest of this section is just a collection of notes:

• References and weblinks
• Typographical errors and remarks
• Destructive and retaining ingress operations
• Note G and the calculation of Bernoulli numbers
• A lengthy paper on Note G and the calculation of Bernoulli numbers
• Is the AE Turing capable?
• Zero working variables
• Has the AE a minus zero?
• Card handling in the AE
• Evolution of the AE
• New memory cell with retaining and erasing readout
• Game-like visualisation of the AE including some small example programs
• Use of Bernoulli number calculation as example for early historical machines
• Instead of using adress calculations, Bernoulli's numbers can be (and would have been) calculated as batches: Tabular calculation of the Babbage numbers