Early Evolution of Earth’s mightiest non-Humans:

In the early years of the eighteenth century, 1812,  a man in his early 20s was sitting in a room  just like on any other day and looking at a table of logarithms. He believed there would be many errors in them, and wanted to make out some way to calculate those logarithmic tables precisely. He always believed that it might be achieved by using a machine than by human hand. There were some mathematicians who were his colleagues, they too were trying to solve the tables by breaking down the operations to be performed on those logarithms between many computers (here ‘computer’ refers to a human who computes, just like a ‘driver’ refers to the human who drives, as there weren’t any electronic devices in those days) and these computing humans weren’t skilled much and were capable of performing only additions and subtractions. By observing this mass of people giving not-exact  trials everyday, the man thought ‘how would it be if these unskilled people can be replaced by a machinery which can perform many kinds of calculations with a highest rate of accuracy?’ .....  and that moment of time has changed the history of this world forever. That was the birth of an idea for the development of machines which can do mathematics accurately, and that man who had been the source of the idea was the person whom everyone in this present world of technology is aware of, and mainly those from Computer Science field would owe him forever, Charles Babbage.

Charles Babbage, the ‘father of computers’ is so called  as he had developed the ideas and models of machanical devices that  perform calculations, and those designs that he invented were very much similar to the modern computers which you, me and many billions around the world are now using. Similarities like the separation of data and program memories, operations being instruction based, machines having separate I/O unit, etc., are quite the same in the present day computers.  His designs had made many scientists around the world to start thinking of the subsequent developments that can be implemented on those designs without which you wouldn’t be reading this document in a computer. Charles Babbage, since being dawned on with the idea, had started to develop a machine called Difference Engine which had really made the difference in the earliest world of computer technology by making the computations of  polynomial functions, calculate series of similar values by using the method of finite differences.  His machines were among the first mechanical computers of this world to be ever emerged.

After the development of the Difference  Engine had worn out, he then started to design another, this time a more complex machine called Analytical Engine. It was not a single physical machine, but a sequence of different designs. He worked on the development of that machine until his death. The Analytical Engine includes sequential control, branching, looping and have been the first mechanical device to be Turing-complete.

Ada Lovelace was one of the very few people who completely understood the Babbage’s ideas, and had been the first one to write a program for the Analytical Engine, has become the World’s first programmer ever. In 1979, a comtemporary programming language as an honour had been named after her, Ada.

After Charles was dead, his designs were undertaken by London Science Museum, there many scientists have worked for a very long time span of some years and brought a personified form to Charles’ designs of both the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine.

Those discoveries in the early days of the computer technology’s development taken up by an infinite number of scientists for further revolutionary improvements had been resulted in the world that we are now living in this present day. These were the people who had been the reasons of our human world’s invaluable development in every possible field of technology and redefinition of the lives of many people around the world..!!

I wonder how the idea of making machines work for humans had entered into Charles’ mind that day, but we all should be very thankful that it happened, else our human imagination would quickly runout of thoughts to have a picture of how our world would be like without any of the present techonoligical miracles and wonders that we are now witnessing.

One thing is precise, ‘Computer’ has been the only son in the world who is claimed of being wanted to be the child of many fathers(scientists) in this world,  but it all went into Charles Babbage...!!! God bless his soul. Thank Him very much, for he changed our lives forever...!!!

P.S: Here is an exclusive photograph to you  all. The very SOURCE that had been the birth place of the ideas that we just looked into,  the very corner stone of the revolutionary and ground breaking changes that took place in the world, the source is the brain of Charles Babbage:

 Written by:

Krishna Kanth

(an 'NIT'ian)