Second Blog

If Charles Babbage had finished the Analytical Engine.....

I believe that the computers now would really a lot more advanced.

But there's one thing that amazes me. If you look at the Analytical Engine, it is mostly (if not all) mechanical. Who could ever think that by turning some wheels, you can yeild some answers.

There are some things in the Analytical Engine that I think can be related to the parts of a modern computer.

1. First, the rod where the wheels are connected (bottom of the machine), i think that in the computers now, this is the clock. The faster this wheel turns the faster the computer can process data, also all the wheels are attached to it, it keeps the parts synchronized.
2. The wheels on that rod, I think that the wheels on that rod has some grooves so that when it turns, it can "compute" for the answer or it can be conditions to either change the positions of the flat metal parts on the top, so i think that in modern computers, this is the ALU or the arithmetic logic unit which contains the basic operations and some conditions.
3. and the last thing i could see that can be related to a modern computer are the flat metal sticks, notice on the left part of the engine, some of those flat metal parts are either pushed or pulled by the wheels, i think that this holds the data, so i can say that in modern computers, this is the flip flops, each metal part can hold 1 bit of data

This is mechanical, modern computers are purely electronic, how did this help in developing modern computers? First of all, i think that if Charles Babbage had created a machine that Automates jobs, it just proved that it can be done. Second, when we solve a problem, it is easy for us to solve something because we understand what the problem means, but a computer doesnt understand that, so he represented the data (numbers) into something that can be manipulated by a machine in order to come up with an answer.

I know that the older computers (older than analytical engine) like the abacus had a way to represent data (used balls to represent numbers), but in order to get an answer, someone should move the balls to get an answer, Charles Babbage was able to make that automated.