ชาร์ลส์ แบบเบจ (Charles Babbage) 

Charles Babbage in 1860 © Science Museum, London. Science & Society Picture Library.

Charles Babbage had the extreme misfortune to be born in the wrong century. Late in life he said that he had never spent a happy day and that he would gladly give up the rest of his time if he could spend just three days 500 years in the future.

He was the son of a wealthy banker, and was born on December 26th 1791, in London. He was educated initially in Totnes in Devon, where the family had its roots. In 1810 he went up to Cambridge, where he found that he knew more algebra than his tutors. In 1812, the idea occurred to him that a major part of the work of making mathematical tables could be carried out by a machine. This was the start of his vision.
ข้อมูลจาก http://www.oldcomputers.arcula.co.uk/hist3.htm

        บุคคลอีกผู้หนึ่งที่มีบทบาทสำคัญมากต่อการผลิตเครื่องจักรเพื่อช่วยในการคำนวณ คือ ชาร์ลส์ แบบเบจ (Charles Babbage) ชาวอังกฤษ ในปี พ.ศ. 2343 เขาประสบผลสำเร็จในการสร้างเครื่องคำนวณที่เรียกว่า ดิฟเฟอเรนซ์เอนจิน (difference engine) ต่อมาในปี พ.ศ. 2354 เขาเริ่มต้นโครงการพัฒนาเครื่องคำนวณแบบใหม่ที่เรียกว่า แอนาไลติคอลเอนจิน (analytical engine)  ที่มีลักษณะคล้ายกับเครื่องคอมพิวเตอร์ในยุคปัจจุบัน คือมีหน่วยความจำ หน่วยคำนวณ และวิธีการที่จะให้เครื่องทำงานตามคำสั่งจนได้ผลลัพธ์ออกมา เขาต้องใช้เวลาและทุ่มแรงงานจำนวนมากใน การประดิษฐ์ แต่เนื่องจากเครื่องแอนาไลติคอลเอนจินต้องใช้กลไกจำนวนมาก และต้องใช้ชิ้นส่วนที่มีความละเอียดสูง ซึ่งเทคโนโลยีในขณะนั้นไม่สามารถรองรับการผลิตชิ้นส่วนเหล่านั้นได้ ทำให้เครื่องจักรที่เขาผลิตขึ้นมานั้นไม่สามารถใช้งานได้ 

          ดิฟเฟอเรนซ์เอนจิน (difference engine)
        A fragment of the Difference Engine No. 1 (1832) © Science Museum, London. Science & Society Picture Library

This is a small part of Difference Engine No. 1 and the only major part that was constructed during Babbage's lifetime. It is housed in the Science Museum, London and is still in perfect working order.

Babbage first constructed a small scale model of the difference engine to demonstrate the principles involved. In 1823 he managed to persuade the government to give him an initial grant of £1500 to enable him to start work on a full-scale engine with the intention of eventually reducing the cost of table making. He envisaged a machine working to 20 figures and 6th order differences. This was a massive undertaking, because not only did he have to design and develop the machine, but he also had to develop the necessary precision engineering tools and techniques in order to make it.

As the years went by, Babbage received further grants from the government, but also spent a considerable amount of his personal fortune on the project. By 1833, he had a major argument with Joseph Clement, his instrument maker and Clement withdrew himself and his tools from the project.

While the Difference Engine project was halted, Babbage conceived an idea of stunning brilliance, which was to occupy him for the rest of his life. This was the idea of a universal calculating engine, a machine that would perform any series of calculations that could be formulated for it.

Smitten with this idea, Babbage lost interest in the much humbler difference engine and also lost sight of the original intention of the whole exercise, that is, the production of tables. The Analytical Engine, as it was called, became an end in itself, an unattainable goal that he struggled towards but never quite managed to reach.

ข้อมูลจาก http://www.oldcomputers.arcula.co.uk/hist3.htm

                        แอนาไลติคอลเอนจิน (analytical engine)
      Analytical Engine - A portion of the Mill (1871). © Science Museum, London. Science & Society Picture Library.

The Analytical Engine was not a logical extension of the Difference Engine concept, but radically different.

The Difference Engine was basically an adding machine constrained to function in a particular way. It was ingenious, but not radical. The Analytical Engine, however, was an entirely new departure. Babbage was led towards the analytical engine because of his work on the difference engine but the step was by no means inevitable.

Babbage was aware of the limitations of the difference engine. In particular, as the engine moved along the curve, cranking out its computed values for the polynomial, there came a point where the polynomial's values began to move away from the curve. At this point, a new and different polynomial would be needed if the engine were to stay on the curve. The engine would have to be stopped and its wheels would have to be reset to the values for the new polynomial. The engine could then continue to crank along the curve, until the next deviation when the whole process would have to be repeated. - this annoyed Babbage, partly because it offended his sense of correctness and partly because it was a possible source of errors.

Babbage outlined and improved his design for the Analytical Engine between 1834 and 1836. In it, he foresaw all the major components and functions of a modern electronic computer. Unlike the earlier difference engine, which he was forever publicising, Babbage worked on the Analytical Engine alone with his vision, in isolation and, one suspects, with a degree of bitter desperation. He had now abandoned any idea of the utility of the finished article and was pursuing his goal, which was to mechanise thought.

The engine consisted of several isolated parts, a Mill, or the calculating unit; the Store , which consisted of columns of figure wheels; input devices (the card readers), and output devices (printer or card punches).

The operation of the Analytical Engine was to be controlled by punched cards, this idea was not original to Babbage but the principle was borrowed from the Jacquard Loom, which could weave complex patterns. Each thread was controlled by a needle and rod, which could move by passing through a hole punched on the card, or would be held still in the absence of a hole. The Jacquard loom mindlessly fed in its cards one after another. 

          ต่อมาในปี พ.ศ. 2439 เฮอร์แมน ฮอลเลอริช (Herman Hollorith)ได้จดทะเบียนก่อตั้งบริษัทเพื่อผลิตและจำหน่ายเครื่องจักรช่วยในการคำนวณ โดยใช้ชื่อบริษัท คอมพิวติง เทบบูลาติง เรดคอร์ดดิง (Computing Tabulating Recording : CTR) หลังจากนั้นในปี พ.ศ. 2467 ได้เปลี่ยนชื่อมาเป็นบริษัทไอบีเอ็ม (International Business Machine : IBM) บริษัทไอบีเอ็มนี้มีบทบาทสำคัญในการผลิตเครื่องคอมพิวเตอร์รุ่นแรกๆ ของโลก

          ในปี พ.ศ. 2487 บริษัทไอบีเอ็มได้สร้างเครื่องคำนวณที่สามารถคำนวณจำนวนที่มีค่า ต่างๆ ได้ โดยหัวหน้าโครงการคือ ศาสตราจารย์โฮวาร์ด ไอเกน (Howard Aiken) แห่งมหาวิทยาลัยฮาร์วาร์ด และให้ชื่อเครื่องคำนวณนี้ว่า มาร์กวัน (Mark I)  

        Harvard Mark-1 is completed. Conceived by Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and designed and built by IBM, the Harvard Mark-1 was a room-sized, relay-based calculator. The machine had a fifty-foot long camshaft that synchronized the machine’s thousands of component parts. The Mark-1 was used to produce mathematical tables but was soon superseded by stored program computers.

     ข้อมูลจาก http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=cmptr