Is the first computer in London?

so welcome to a very gray and wet London and we're on our way right into the center to go and find ourselves a piece of Computer History we're going to find the origin of where everything came [Music] from foree [Music] speech [Music] e guys you know I always forget how long that tunnel actually is thank you very so this is where we're going we're going to go and check out something interesting inside the science museum so here we are probably one of the most well probably one of the most favorite places of mine in the whole of this city in the science mum loads of fun things to take a look at inside here big big giant dages as you walk in but we're not looking for those we're not looking for tickets either we're not even looking in the rocket room which is amazing what we're looking for is we can find it we're going to need to go up to level two I think clock makers Museum mathematics and the gallery for the information age so let's go get our steps in and let's go walk upstairs until we get to what we're looking for this is Charles Page's Difference Engine Number Two it's the first generally accepted computer uh was the antira mechanism which was discovered in 1901 this was an analog computer a hand powerered computer uh used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance Charles babage on the that is credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer so babage began to construct a small Difference Engine in 1819 and had it completed by 82 this was his Difference Engine zero after he announced it to the world in 1823 the British government gave Charles babage £17,000 to start work on the project an absolutely astronomical sum of money although babbage's design was feasible the metal working techniques of the era couldn't economically make the parts in the Precision required thus the implementation proved to be much more expensive and doubtful of success than the government's initial estimate so according to the 1830s design for the Difference Engine Number One it would have weighed about weighed about 4 tons and constructed about 25,000 Parts why did the British government give such a large amount of money to babage at the end of it babage through cost overruns had received and spent over 177,000 on development of this which still fell short of achieving a working engine he had the plans he just never got around to actually building the whole thing with the technology and the tools of the day that he had so the British government wanted one of these things to create tables or Gunnery tables now back in the early 1800s Britain had a very large Navy and very large naval ships comes with very large guns and if you want to calculate how to actually fire one of those guns how much powder to put in how far up the angle to aim it and take into account things like wind and atmospheric pressure it's a lot of calculation so what we would do is we would precompute these into tables we would get people to actually work out the hand maths and write down what looked like an Excel spreadsheet these were incredibly time consuming incredibly costly and prone to human mistake so what babbage's Difference Engine would do is take the human equation out of that calculation and produced very very accurate and efficient Gunnery table for the British government or at least for the the Armed Forces now babish never actually got around to completing that Difference Engine he went on to design something else called the analytical engine which was the first proposed mechanical general purpose computer and the analytical engine was actually supposed to be uring complete meaning that the structure of the analytical engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era this was also the first programmable computer or at least programmable computer design that would use Punch Cards in 1846 Charles babage decided to go back to the Difference Engine rather than the analytical engine to produce some full set of drawings for the Difference Engine Number Two The Difference Engine Number Two only required 8,000 parts only a third of what was originally designed in the difference in number one making for a much simpler thing to actually build thanks to these full drawings being donated to the Science Museum from the Charles bage estate it was thought that this could actually be built it may have taken 17 years to actually construct it from these original drawings but you can see it right here this is the Difference Engine Number Two fully included with its printer that was added in 2002 this piece of equipment was designed over 100 50 years ago and the work done here by babage is probably the core of most of our modern Computing infrastructure if you trace it all the way back this is not the only difference end exists in the world there is actually a second one that exists in the Computing in California so let's go see what else we can find inside [Music] here so other fun Computing stuff we can find calculators mechanical calculator machines from the 1900s to the 1970s now these beautiful Mechanical Devices there's one specific calculator I wonder if they've got it inside here a Curtis they haven't but we first have one of the first electronic pocket calculators here from Sinclair in Cambridge look at that isn't that beautiful 1973 I'm making a pocket calculator a digital pocket calculator where people's ideas of calculators still kind of look like this over here babish may not have got around to building that Difference Engine but he D be did build a couple of prototypes and here's one of them just to prove that the concept of the gearing systems work Charles Bish didn't just build something called The Difference Engine it was the only one that they rebuilt this this is one of the parts of bab's second Design This was the analytical engine [Music] this analytical engine was something that AA Loveless looked at famous for being the first computer programmer in 1843 Loveless explained that the engine might act upon other things besides the number it might for example Express musical notes as members she suggested that mathematical truth was the instrument through which weak mind of man can most effectively read his Creator's Works wow beautiful devices look at this 1965 this is a pdp8 a mini computer this thing was designed to sit on your desk first successful for mini computer this thing ran all sorts of stuff this thing ran early versions of Unix Mathematica from wol from research and a copy of mat lab on a floppy disc that thing there it's not a save icon that's natural floppy floppy disc in here ooh would you look at that undersea cables running telegraph cables across the Atlantic all over what was the former British Empire the Atlantic Telegraph systems while to get these things working they blew up a few of them look at these are these beautiful these a four needle Telegraph so what happen is depending on which signal you sent down the line these little things would move left and right to indicate what letter you actually wanted this is before the invention of Mor and Morse code these lovely diagrams well these trees and over here an interesting piece of Computer History it's the next cube is this the actual next Cube that was [Music] used and look what else we got over here Douglas Engelberg and his first Mouse and an alter at800 yeah this was the first computer that um Bill Gates and Paul Allen actually worked on to develop their software start Microsoft some of the classic British computers there oh there something you don't see every day you see that one right there very hard to see in this light but we can zoom in that is an O PC a one laptop per child it's a charity organization designed to give computers to kids in Africa I remember right that thing had a black and white screen and a really cut down version of Linux never took off great concept though came with the solar charger of all things it's a replica of tar the tell Star Satellite in 1962 this thing was designed to take TV signals from the US over to Europe and bounce them through space so you take a TV signal on something like this and bounce it all the way up to tailar that would relay it back down on the other side uh down to the UK and down to Europe there's a slight problem in here though is it says on this little diagram it says in service for only 6 months tell star Mar to new in satellite communication so why was this thing only in service for 6 months because the Americans were nuking space at the time so this was before the test band treaty or the atmospheric test band treaty where the both the Americans and the Soviets were exploding bombs in the atmosphere and one of those bombs produced a massive electromagnetic field around the earth that just basically took out their satellite there were more tail Stars after this uh TV very big business but yeah the first one failed after 6 months because the Americans accidentally nuked it oh would you look at that it's a street view tricycle the early ones from 2008 we take straight view for granted but wow it's a lot of effort to take cameras around every single Street all the major cities around the world this place is huge there's everything here from Rockets to planes Computing Clockwork huge Wonder lab something for the kids to do some light simulators upstairs as well and remember this is London so these major museums they're free Science Museum Natural History Museum British museum all free there's some interesting objects in this Museum we look down here that car right there that car right there was made by Rover it's called jet one let's go downstairs and take a closer look we our away past some more steam engines and this is jet one so Frank Whitt designed the jet engine as common knowledge but what did we do after that well they built a few things with it they built the comet they handed a bunch of the technology over to the Americans as well they also handed the technology to a now defunct car company called Rover and what Rover did was they put that jet engine into a car this thing never went to production but I just think it's quite a cool Quirk of History there's not many jet cars out there was never quite practical just getting past the uh first model of DNA here really important second history and there we go the Rover gas turbine car the jet one in 1950 made by Rover using the Frank Whittle jet engine oo something that many people will recognize it's an apple one Steve Jobs and Steve wnc making those in their back Garden not the back Garden sorry making those in a shed or a garage in California hand soldering every single one of the components these things are worth tens of thousands of pounds today and we've also got a cray want supercomputer from 1976 this thing ran stuff like Banks and research operations had seating on the outside of it this over here here is the jackard lon from 1825 probably credited as even earlier than any other forms of programmable Computing this was designed to weave patterns into cloth but if we go above what you can see there is the pun buch card buch card system designed to put patents into cloth because before this if you wanted patterns in your weaved cloth you had to be very very rich this automated the process you trace back computer Automation and writing a program or a set of instructions you get back to this the jackard loom so let's take the last trip through the rocket room and what we can find in here there's a few interesting little objects one should be just around this corner there so many people walk past that's a piece of the moon piece of the Moon brought back on Apollo 15 look at that the so capture this is what's taken people to the space the space station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle there you find a copy of one of the only I think the only actually British designed and launched Rockets called Black Arrow only one of those was ever launched in Australia British government cut funding to it another thing that we could have had that the British government ended because of shortsightedness so guys I hope you enjoyed that little adventure around the science museum looking for Charles B's Difference Engine Number Two and some other interesting things that you'll find in there I hope if you're ever in London that you'll take the time to come and visit and check out this beautiful free museum here on exhibition Road right opposite the Victorian album Museum and the Natural History Museum until the next time

Channel: Mike in the Cloud

Views: 175

Keywords: Babbage, British History, California., Computer Museum, Computing, Engineering, History, London, London History, Science Museum, Tube, Victorian

Id: 8ogZKWCGIaw

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023