Building the World's First Computer

Charles Babbage is equally famous for two things:
inventing the first computer, and failing to build it.
-- Doron Swade

About six months ago I got involved with Plan28.org, a 12-year-old project that is investigating whether it would be possible to build, for the first time, one of Charles Babbage's many designs for the first computer, which he called the "Analytical Engine". They estimate that it is a 15 to 20 year project that will cost $20M to $40M.

I proposed first building a complete but simplified engine that doesn't follow precisely any of Babbage's 30-odd designs, but uses his ideas and mechanisms. I wrote and iterated on a proposal which is now 40 pages long: https://github.com/LenShustek/AnalyticalEngine/blob/main/proposal_V0.5.pdf. In the "garage startup" tradition, I started on my own to write some simulators and to create 3D printed parts for experimental prototypes of subsections.

My plans and progress have been documented on GitHub at https://github.com/LenShustek/AnalyticalEngine.  But as the design and prototype implementation proceeds, my status reports there are starting to seem more like a blog than a repository. So I decided to start this blog as an alternative way to communicate progress. 

I am focused first on building a version of Babbage's "Anticipating Carriage", a clever design of which he was so justifiably proud. I will try soon to add some retroactive material about how that subproject has developed, and will eventually get back the present.

Len Shustek, len@shustek.com
29 March 2024

(C) 2016, Sidney Padua