The greatest machine that never was John GrahamCumming

but Racine I’m going to talk to you

about is what I call the greatest

machine that never was it was a machine

that was never built and yet it will be

built it was a machine that was designed

long before anyone thought about

computers if you know anything about the

history of computers you will know that

in the 30s and the 40s simple computers

were created that started the computer

revolution we have today and you would

be correct except you’d have the wrong

century

the first computer was really designed

in the 1830s and 1840s not the 1930s and

1940s it was designed and parts of it

were prototyped and the bits of it that

were built are here in south kensington

their machine was built by this guy

Charles Babbage now I have a great

affinity of Charles Babbage because his

hair is always completely unkempt like

this in every single picture and he was

a very wealthy man and a sort of part of

the aristocracy of Britain and on a

Saturday night in Marylebone were you

part of the intelligentsia at that

period you would have been invited round

to his house for a soiree and he invited

everybody kings the Duke of Wellington

many many famous people and he would

have shown you one of his mechanical

machines

I really missed that area you know we

could go around for a soiree and see a

mechanical computer get demonstrated to

you but Babbage Babbage himself was born

at the end of the 18th century and was a

fairly famous mathematician he held the

post that Newton held at Cambridge and

that was recently held by Stephen

Hawking he’s less well known than either

of them because he got this idea to make

mechanical computing devices and never

made any of them and the reason he never

made any of them he’s a classic nerd

every time he had a good idea he thinks

brilliant I’m going to start building

that one I’ll spend a fortune on it I’ve

got a better idea I’m going to work on

this one and let me do this one he did

this until Sir Robert Peel then Prime

Minister basically kicked him out of

number 10 Downing Street and kicking him

out in those days that meant saying I

bid you good day sir

um the thing he designed was this

monstrosity here the analytical engine

now just to give you an idea this is

this is a view from above every one of

these circles is a car

a stack of cogs and this thing is as big

as a steam locomotive so as I go through

this talk I want you to imagine this

gigantic machine we heard there’s

wonderful sounds of what this thing does

sound like and I’m going to take you

through the architectures machine that’s

why it’s computer architecture and tell

you about this this machine which is a

computer so let’s talk about the memory

the memory is very like a memory of a

computer today except it was all a made

out of metal stacks and stacks of cogs

30 cogs hi imagine a thing this high of

cogs hundreds and hundreds of them and

they’ve got numbers on them it’s a

decimal machine everything’s done in

decimal he thought about using binary

the prom with using binary the machine

would have been so tall it would’ve been

ridiculous as it is it’s enormous so

he’s got memory the memory is this bit

over here you see it all like this this

monstrosity over here is the CPU the

chip if you like of course it’s this big

completely mechanical this whole machine

is mechanical this is a picture of a

prototype for part of the CPU which is

in the Science Museum the CPU could do

the four fundamental functions of

arithmetic so addition multiplication

subtraction division which already is a

bit of a feat in metal but it could also

do something that a computer does in a

calculator doesn’t this machine could

look at its own internal memory and make

a decision it could do the if-then for

basic programmers and that fundamentally

made it into a computer it could compute

it couldn’t just calculate it could do

more now if we look at this and we stop

for a minute and we think about chips

today we can’t look inside a silicon

chip it’s just so tiny yet if you did

you would see something very very

similar to this there’s this incredible

complexity in the CPU and this

incredible regularity in the memory if

you ever seen an electron microscope

picture you’ll see this it all looks the

same and there’s a bit over here which

isn’t got to be complicated this all

this cogwheel mechanism here is doing

what the computer does but of course you

need to program this thing and of course

Babbage used the technology of the day

and a technology it would reappear in

the 50s 60s and 70s which is punch cards

this thing over here is one of three

punch card readers in here and this is a

program in the Science Museum just not

far from here

created by Charles Babbage that is

sitting there you can go see it waiting

for the machine to be built and there’s

not just one of these as many of them he

prepared programs anticipating this

would happen now the reason we use punch

cards was that jacquard in France had

created the jacquard loom which was

weaving these incredible patterns

controlled by punch cards so he was just

repurposing the technology of the day

and like everything else he did he’s

using the technology of his era

so 1830s 1840s 1850s cogs steam

mechanical devices ironically ball in

the same year as Charles Babbage was

Michael Faraday who had completely

revolutionary ruthless never died

everything with the Dynamo transform was

always was things

Babbage of course wanted to use proven

technology so steam and things now he

needs accessories obviously you got a

computer now you’ve got punch cards a

CPU and memory you need accessories

you’re going to come with you’re not

going to have that so first of all he

had sound he had a bell so if anything

went wrong or the machine needed the

attendant to come to it there was a bell

it could ring and there’s actually

instruction on the punch card that says

ring the bell so you know madness ding

you know just stopped Ramone imagine all

those noise this thing’s like the steam

engine ding right and you also need a

printer obviously everyone is a printer

this is actually a picture of the

printing mechanism for another machine

of his called The Difference Engine

number 2 which he never built but which

the science museum did build in the 80s

and 90s it’s a completely mechanical

again a printer and it prints just

numbers because he was obsessed with

numbers and but it does print onto paper

and even does word wrapping so to get to

underline it goes round like that and

you also need graphics right I mean if

you going to do anything with graphics

so he said well I need a plotter I got a

big piece of paper an ink pen and I’ll

make it plot so he designed a plotter as

well and and you know at that point I

think he got pretty much pretty good

machine and along comes this woman Ada

Lovelace now imagine these soirees all

these great and good comes along this

lady is the daughter of mad

and dangerous to know Lord Byron and her

mother being a bit worried that she

might have inherited some of Lord

Byron’s madness and badness thought I

know the solution mathematics is the

solution we’ll teach her mathematics

that’ll calm her down because of course

there’s never been a mathematician

that’s gone crazy so in an army file

suddenly refi so she’s got this

mathematical and training and she goes

to one of these soirees with her mother

and Charles Babbage you know gets out

his machine so Duke of Wellington is

there you know again that machine

obviously demonstrated and she gets it

she’s the only person in his lifetime

really who said I understand what this

does and I understand the future of this

machine and we owe to her an enormous

amount because we know a lot about the

machine that Babbage was intending to

build because of her now some people

call her the first programmer this is

actually the from one of the paper that

she translated this is a program written

in a particular style it’s not a

historically totally accurate that she’s

the first programmer and actually she

did something more amazing rather than

just being a programmer she saw

something that Babbage didn’t Babbage

was totally obsessed with mathematics he

was building a machine to do mathematics

and Lovelace said you could do more than

mathematics on this machine and just as

you do everyone in this room has ready

got a computer on them right now because

I got a phone if you go into that phone

every single thing in out phone or

computer or anything any other computing

device is mathematics it’s all numbers

at the bottom whether it’s video or text

or music or voice it’s all numbers is

all underlying it mathematical functions

happening and Lovelace said just because

you’re doing mathematical functions and

symbols doesn’t mean this thing’s can’t

represent other things in the real world

such as music this was the huge leap

because Babbage is there saying we get

to complete these amazing functions and

print out tables and numbers and draw

graphs and Lovelace of those he says

look this thing could even compose music

if you told it a representation of music

numerically so this is what I call

Lovelace asleep when you say she’s a

programmer

she did do some but the real thing is to

have said the future is going to be much

much more than this now 100 years later

this guy comes Long Island cheering and

and in 1936 and invents the computer all

over again

now of course Babbage’s machine was

entirely mechanical cheering’s machine

was entirely theoretical both of these

guys were coming from a mathematical

perspective but cheering told us

something very important he just laid

down the mathematical foundations for

computer science and said it doesn’t

matter how you make a computer it

doesn’t matter if your computer’s

mechanical like Babbage’s was or

electronic like computers are today or

perhaps in the future cells or again

mechanical again once we get into

nanotechnology we could go back to

Babbage’s machine and just make it tiny

all those things are computers there

isn’t a computing essence this is called

the church during thesis and so suddenly

you get this link where you say this

thing Babbage built really was a

computer in fact it was capable of doing

everything we do today with computers

only really slowly to give you an idea

of how slowly we had about 1k of memory

and it used punch cards which have been

fed in and it ran about 10,000 times

slower than the first zx81 it did have a

ram pack you could add on a lot of extra

memory if you wanted to so where does

that bring us today so there’s there’s a

there aplan over in Swindon the science

museum archive there are hundreds of

plans and thousands of pages of notes

written by Charles Babbage about this

analytical engine one of those is a set

of plans that we call plan 28 and that

is also the name of a charity that I

started with Doron Swade

who was the curator of computing at the

Science Museum and also the person who

drove the project to build difference

engine and our plan is to build it here

in South Kensington we will build the

analytical engine the project has a

number of parts to it one was the

scanning of Babbage’s archive that’s

been done the second is now the study of

all of those plans to determine what to

build the third part is a computer

simulation of that machine and the last

part is to physically build it at the

science

when it’s built you’ll finally be able

to understand how a computer works

because we’re having a tiny chip in

front of you you better look at this

humongous thing and say ah I see the

memory operating I see the CPU are

breaking I hear it operating I probably

smell it operating and but in between

that we’re going to do a simulation

Babbage himself wrote that he said as

soon as the analytical engine exists it

will surely guide the future course of

science because he never built it

because he was always fiddling with new

plans but when he did get built of

course in the 1940s everything changed

I’ll just give you a little taste of

what it looks like in motion with a

video which shows just one part of the

CPU mechanism working so there’s just

three sets of cogs and it’s going to add

this is the adding mechanism in action

so you imagine this gigantic machine so

give me five years before the 2030s

happen we’ll have it thank you very much