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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: \"C\" vrs ADA (really Babbage)
Message-ID: <8473@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 15:36:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.8473
Posted: Mon Aug 24 15:36:42 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Aug-87 15:36:42 EDT
References: <8948@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 23

> ...  The construction of the Analytical
> Engine was never completed.  It was too ambitious for the machining
> capabilities of the time.

To correct this common misconception:  Babbage understood the machining
capabilities of his time thoroughly, he allowed for their limitations,
and his Analytical Engine designs would have worked had they been built.
The Analytical Engine's real problem was that it was not really fast
enough to justify its high cost, especially in view of the limited demand
for computing at the time.  Babbage kept fiddling with the design, trying
to make it faster -- he appears to have invented pipelining, among other
things -- and this instability also made it difficult for anyone to try
building it.

By the way, Babbage not only understood the machine technology of his time,
he may have made an indirect major contribution to it.  His early Difference
Engine used interchangeable parts many years before Eli Whitney "invented"
this concept.  One of the people involved in that project was Whitworth [?]
[this is from memory of a seminar some years ago], who later devised the
world's first standardized screw thread.
-- 
Apollo was the doorway to the stars. |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
Next time, we should open it.        | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry