Visit To The Babbage Engine

ByWayne Willis

When I went to the Computer History Museum last month to see President Levin update the local Yale alumni on the “state of the university,” we got a quick tour of the Babbage Engine, which is reputed to be the first programmable calculator. Pretty impressive.

[youtube width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VCNLqRtsgk[/youtube]

A view of the Babbage Engine from in Front

We also got to see it in action from the back, and then the curator described how it worked, complete with “carry the one” from from one column of digits to the next.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”525″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gwxEH5tZp4[/youtube]

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