"Magic Tricks - The History of Computing Instruments Exhibition" Babbage exhibition board
Babbach Differential Machine No. 2 Computational Model restored by the Science Museum of Tsinghua University
Recently, the "Magic Calculation - Computing Instrument History Exhibition" was launched at the Science Museum of Tsinghua University. The exhibition recreates the legendary life of Charles Babbage, the father of computing, and his ingenious design.
Charles Babbage was born in London, England, where his father was a bank partner on Fleet Street. Although Babbage was talented, he was frail and sickly from an early age, and had to go to many places to study. With the help of tutors, Babbage mastered almost all of the university math courses of the time as a teenager. His father wanted his son to inherit his father's business and apply his excellent mathematical talents to the field of finance, while the young Babbage was firmly committed to scientific research.
In October 1810, at the age of 19, Babbage entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where the elite were gathered, and became an alumnus of Bacon and Newton. Out of a strong interest in mathematics, in 1812 Babbage, together with several classmates including John Herschel, founded a mathematical society called the "Analytical Society" to promote Leibniz's calculus symbology. John Herschel was the son of the great astronomer William Herschel, who later became a brilliant astronomer. In the same year, Babbage transferred to Peter house college at the University of Cambridge and became a nationally emeritus mathematician for solving a series of computational problems in the field of astronomy. In 1819, on the recommendation of the famous astronomer Laplace, Babbage was hired as a professor at the University of Edinburgh.
The young Babbage was ambitious, and his ambitions were not limited to becoming a mere mathematician. In 1824, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded Babbage the Gold Medal, representing the highest honor, in recognition of his great invention ahead of its time, a highly automated steam-powered mechanical computing machine, the differential engine.
The background of the invention of the difference machine begins with the French Revolution, after the overthrow of the monarchy, the newly established National Assembly vigorously promoted multi-party reforms, one of the important tasks was to unify the chaotic weights and measures of the whole country. The original Mathematical Table is no longer applicable and needs to be re-compiled. In 1791, the French mathematician Proni took on this difficult task. Proni adopted a three-level division of labor system of top mathematicians, ordinary mathematicians and grass-roots calculators, and completed a large number of 17 volumes of manuscripts. Unfortunately, however, the entirely manualLy made Mathematical Table was still prone to errors and failed to fulfill its original vision.
The failure of the French mathematicians' tabulation efforts sparked a heated discussion among the members of the Analytical Society, some of whom tried to find a more efficient method of calculation than the French. Babbage has carried out more in-depth reflection, and the grass-roots calculators who occupy the vast majority of the entire watchmaking work need to carry out a lot of simple and repetitive calculation work, and it is difficult for them to avoid calculation errors in long-term boring work. In the current working mode, as long as the calculation work at the grassroots level can not get rid of manpower, no matter how mathematicians optimize the algorithm, they cannot eliminate the calculation error. So Babbage believes that the only effective way is to replace labor with machines. Babbage took inspiration from the Jacquard knitting machine invented by the Frenchman Jaccard, who wanted to invent a machine that could not only achieve fixed calculation functions, but also automatically handle different function calculations according to the needs of the designer. On June 14, 1822, Babbage submitted a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "On the Application of Machinery in Astronomical and Mathematical Table Computation", and the concept of the difference machine was officially introduced.
It was also from 1822, with the support of the British government, that Babbage began the design and manufacture of the difference machine 1. Limited to the level of craftsmanship at the time, the steam-powered Differential Machine 1 eventually became a 10-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide, 5-foot-long, and 2-ton behemoth. Although Babbage continued to revise the design drawings to improve the completion schedule, the Difference Machine 1 had only completed one-seventh of the overall design in 10 years. The British government did a liquidation and found that the entire plan cost a total of 17,500 pounds, which is about the price of 22 steam locomotives or 2 warships. Eventually, the high cost and slim prospects for application led the British government to stop funding for the project.
10 years of experience in designing and manufacturing differential machines gave Babbage the ability to design more powerful machines, and he conceived of a more sophisticated and complex analytical machine. According to Babbage's design, the parser was able to calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions using polynomial expansion methods and complete assembly language-like program instructions, which already had the basic prototype of modern computers. Although Babbage poured out his family fortune and subsidized £13,000 for the difference machine project, due to the lack of sustained government support and the inability to make a breakthrough in the development schedule, his research team gradually disbanded, and Babbage entered the darkest moments of his life.
The twist of the story takes place in 1833 when a young aristocratic woman named Ida Lovelace is introduced to Babbage by her teacher. Ada was born into a prestigious family and was the daughter of the famous English poet Lord Byron. As a countess, she was young but had excellent mathematical talents.
From 1842 to 1843, Ida spent nine months translating into English the paper "A Brief Message on the Analytical Machine Invented by Mr. Babbage", by the Italian mathematician Luigi Minabbia about the Babbage analytical machine. At Babbage's suggestion and encouragement, Ida expanded her understanding during the translation, leaving twice as long an annotation as the original. In these notes, Ida emphasizes the fundamental difference between the analytical machine and all previous mechanical calculators, its programming ability, which means that it is not just a mechanical calculator, but a cross-era mechanical computer. Ida believes that programming capabilities will make the application potential of this machine far beyond simple number computing. With the right programs, one can use analytical machines to characterize complex functional relationships, even for typography and music creation. Inspired by the punching cards of mechanical looms, Ada also introduced the mechanism of punching input in the process of programming. In this way, Ida gave the analytical machine the ability to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which is considered to be the world's first "computer program", when Ida was only 27 years old. In the history of science, this translation of Ida is regarded as the first book on programming, and Ida herself was not only a countess in the Victorian era, but also the first programmer in human history.
In the two years from 1847 to 1849, Babbage used the experience gained from the development of the analytical machine to redesign the difference machine 2. This No. 2 machine can calculate the difference between 31 digits and the 7th order, and its parts are only one-third of the difference machine 1. Unfortunately, at this time, Babbage could not find anyone willing to contribute, and the difference machine 2 only stayed on paper. Even more regrettably, in 1852, at the age of 36, Ida died of excessive blood loss while treating cervical cancer. Babbage, who had lost his right-hand man, studied alone for another 20 years, and finally failed to see the day when the difference machine came out.
Ada's premature death quickly interrupted this friendship between the mountains and the flowing water, and Babbage lost his staunchest supporter and most effective working partner, and this friendship also made the audience sigh.
The differential machine is a cross-era rhapsody in the history of human mechanical manufacturing, and it has become a symbolic symbol of steampunk literature in the future. Science fiction master William Gibson's masterpiece "The Difference Machine" depicts a parallel world in which the difference machine was successfully created. While commemorating the great pioneers of science, perhaps we can use the imagination of literary scholars to feel another possibility of human technology trees.
(Source: Tsinghua University Science Museum)
10 years of experience in designing and manufacturing differential machines gave Babbage the ability to design more powerful machines, and he conceived of a more sophisticated and complex analytical machine. According to Babbage's design, the parser was able to calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions using polynomial expansion methods and complete assembly language-like program instructions, which already had the basic prototype of modern computers.
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Late differential machine
At the level of Victorian craftsmanship, it was too difficult to build a steam-powered, purely mechanical structure of a Babage differential machine.
But computer theory continued to evolve through the likes of Alain Turing and von Neumann, and finally in 1946, Mankind's first programmable electronic computer, Eniack, was born in the United States across the ocean, a full 75 years after Babbage's death. In order to commemorate Babbage's great contribution, from 1985 to 1991, the Science Museum in London built a complete difference machine 2 in 6 years according to Babbage's drawings. This huge mechanical computer, 3.35 meters long and 2.13 meters high, with more than 4,000 parts and weighing 2.5 tons, perfectly fulfills all the functions of Babbage's design. (Yao Yu)
Source: Science and Technology Daily