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# Analytical Engine

The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English
mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the
successor to Babbage's Difference Engine, a design for a simpler mechanical calculator.

## Design

The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of
conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory. It was the first design for a
general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.

The machine was to be steam-powered, and would be operated by one person. Inputs would be
provided on punched cards, inspired by the cards used by Joseph Marie Jacquard for textile
looms. The design called for thousands of mechanical parts.

## Key Components

| Component | Function |
|-----------|----------|
| Mill | Arithmetic/logic unit (like a CPU) |
| Store | 1,000 numbers × 50 decimal digits of memory |
| Reader | Punched card input |
| Printer | Output device |
| Curve drawing apparatus | Graphical output |

## Programming

The Analytical Engine was intended to use three different card types: operation cards, variable
cards, and number cards. The machine could branch on a condition, loop a sequence of operations,
and call subroutines — fundamental features of modern programming.

Ada Lovelace worked with Babbage on an 1843 paper describing the engine, and included what is
now considered the first published algorithm — a method to compute Bernoulli numbers — intended
for the machine to execute.

## Legacy

The Analytical Engine was never completed. Babbage worked on it until his death in 1871.
Building a portion of the Mill and the printing mechanism was as far as construction proceeded.

Alan Turing's 1936 theoretical work on computation is generally considered to have superseded
the need to physically build the Analytical Engine, as Turing proved what can and cannot be
computed with a universal computing machine. However, the Analytical Engine's design directly
inspired many later computer pioneers, who recognised its key ideas as foundational.
