Researchers to build Babbage Analytical Engine

Over the next decade, a group of researchers in the UK will attempt to construct a working version of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, which he dreamed up a hundred years ago, but did not complete. John Markoff has the story in the New York Times today, and here's a related interactive feature. Cory blogged about the project recently on Boing Boing, and the legacy of Babbage, a great mathematician, philisopher, and engineer, is a favorite topic in our archives (see links below).

• [Nadreck]

  A nice design but  can’t we add a few more features while we’re building it?

  • [CountZero]

    What, like bells and whistles, you mean?

• [Peter L Borst]

  philisopher = philistine with an advanced degree?

• [Anne Onimos]

  “…Analytical Engine, which he dreamed up a hundred years ago…”?  Not unless he dreamed after dying. 

• [mtdna]

  I wonder how Steve Jobs would have introduced it?

  “And  one more thing. It’s made entirely of metal. No more wood, with its annoying creaking and flammability. Metal, with retina-resolution ivory dials.”

• [Adnan Ahmad]

  One step closer to the Solar Union?
  (Ken Macleod reference)

• [Robert Baruch]

  Can I toot my own horn here? Granted, I’m just one guy who has to work for a living…

• [TimHaynes]

  That diagram reminds me of the Mandelbrot Set.

• [Jenonymous]

  But where are they going to get Solominic gold for the punchcards?  <—-Anathem reference, if  you didn't get it, Google it and then read the book, it's worth it!

• [Jenonymous]

  Okay, stupid commenting system won’t let me edit my comment.  CRYPTONOMICON reference not Anathem.  Sheesh.

• [Larry]

  So what’s th OS?…. Ye Olde Fortran?

• [mwm8180]

  didn’t they do this already?
  http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/

• [AA]

  OK…this is where linux starts showing its limitations…

• [spidley]

  @mwm8180 no, that’s his Difference Engine, basically a calculator.  The Analytical Engine is a true computer.

• [David Hauka]

  Wonderful!