The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer

Doron SwadeViking2001325 pp.ISBN 0-670-91020-1£17.60

Keywords: Cybernetics, Publication, Computers

Our love affair with computers of all descriptions should make us want to know more about their origins. Nowadays it would appear that our preoccupation with making them do what we want them to do or just getting them to work- means that many of us fail "to see the wood for the trees". There are, of course,computer historians who have recorded in great detail the evolution of computing machines but it is still difficult to get the average user interested. Even students of Computer Science and other related disciplines are quite ignorant about where the machines came from. Perhaps its a matter of their interest in where they are going or the Sci-Fi scenario that fascinates them more than the past endeavours of computer pioneers.

What is usually a chapter at the most in an introductory book on computing,cybernetics or systems has in this volume under review been expanded to 352 pages divided up into three parts.

Not everyone sees Charles Babbage as the father of Computing or his first"engines" to be the world's first computers. Whatever your view, however, if you are interested in computers at all then a description of Babbage's Difference Engine is surely essential reading together with the details of his early life in Cambridge.

This book looks at Charles Babbage's development of the Difference and Analytical Engines. It then goes on to describe and discuss the recreation of his Differences Engine at the Science Museum at the end of what is now the last Century.

As with most pioneers in any field – and particularly in science– Babbage was hardly a popular figure in the society of the day. For example, as most readers will know, his efforts at designing and building devices, at first to compute the mathematical tables of the day which were needed for navigation, building works and other applications where calculations were needed, was not met with great enthusiasm. With errors in abundance and the actual calculation being carried out by humans his "computers" required much redevelopment.

The book is well written in a readable style which, to some extent, captures the atmosphere of the time. It includes details of those who were involved and influenced the design of the Analytical Engine.

The latter part of the book gives an insight into the attempt to build the modern version of the Difference Engine and contains some interesting details about the project.

Doron Swade's book will of course be of great interest to all who study the period from the point of view of the historian. It is also worthwhile text for those who, because they are essentially science-orientated are sufficiently curious about the beginnings of "computer" technology in the 19th century and its effect on the 20th and 21st, to wish to discover more about the people of that century whose ideas and dreams produced the computers we have now come to rely upon.

D.M. Hutton