The Analytical Engine (A Pre-Electronic Computer)
The first mechanical computer was the analytical engine, conceived and partially constructed by Charles Babbage in London, England, between 1822 and 1871. It was designed to receive instructions from punched cards, make calculations with the aid of a memory bank, and print out solutions to math problems. Although Babbage lavished the equivalent of $6,000 of his own money-and $17,000 of the British government's money-on this extraordinarily advanced machine, the precise work needed to engineer its thousands of moving parts was beyond the ability of the technology of the day to carry out. It is doubtful whether Babbage's brilliant concept could have been realized using the available resources of his own century. But if it had been, it seems likely that the analytical engine could have performed the same functions as many early electronic computers.