Episode 1 of 2
Start of Conceptual Design
- When
- 1833
- Where
- London
Babbage began work on the Analytical Engine around 1833, moving beyond the Difference Engine to a general-purpose machine.
The work on the design of the analytical engine started around 1833. This machine was proposed as a digital mechanical general-purpose computer, incorporating an arithmetic logic unit, control flow, and integrated memory, making it Turing-complete in modern terms.
Sources
- Analytical engine Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-06
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.