I'm Sorry But it Does Compute - What if and plausibility check

Hi

This is one wild idea but... I began to wonder about how to do what could be called a Information Technology-wank TL: the idea is that information technology (communications and computing) is pushed forward the faster possible and what the consequences of it would be for the world.

Two possibilities for a POD and TL development:

1) After WWI, the increase of trade between the nations force the search for new manners to keep the track of the cargos - it would lead to an early development of mechanical and electromechanical calculators, at the same time that for the growing of telephone networks (and later telex) and the expansion of the use of wireless (radio) for international communication. The rediscovery of Babbage and Ludgate's ideas about an "Analytical Engine" and the increased use of Hollerith mechanical tabulators would open the possibility for an electromechanical analytical engine (EAEs) (more towards plain accounting than other type of data processing). Later the increased use of EAEs would lead to the idea of connect two or more of them through the telex network...

Or...

2) In 1952, recent-elect President Eisenhower become impressed with UNIVAC I after it had predict his election in a landslide, and began a massive computerization programs for the civil side of the government.

What you think? How we can push these technologies forward, without ASBs?
 
What you think? How we can push these technologies forward, without ASBs?

Have someone important and brilliant meet Babbage's son Henry Babbage post 1900. He is interested in the idea and Babbage shows him his fathers old plans and realizes the potential of the original Analytical Engine.

Some information about Henry Babbage:
Henry Prevost Babbage (1824-1918) was Charles Babbage and Georgiana Whitmore's youngest son. As teenagers he and his brother Dugald spent time in Babbage's drawing office and workshop learning workshop skills. Henry later acquired a sound grasp of the Difference and Analytical Engine designs, and came to form a close bond with his father whom he visited on furlough from extended military service in India. Babbage bequeathed his drawings, workshop and the surviving physical relics of the engines to Henry who tried to continue his father's work and to publicize the engines after Babbage's death. He was at his father's bedside when Babbage died in 1871.
There is no continuous line of development from Babbage to the electronic era and Henry is one of the bridging figures. From 1872 Henry continued diligently with his father's work and then intermittently in retirement in 1875. He assembled about six small demonstration pieces for Difference Engine No. 1 one of which he sent to Harvard. In the 1930s the piece attracted the attention of Howard Aiken, pioneer of the Harvard Mk. I, a program-controlled calculator. Aiken wrote that on seeing the piece 'he felt that Babbage was addressing him personally from the past'. Henry also built an experimental four-function calculator for the Mill for the Analytical Engine, completing it in 1910 when he was eighty-six years old. His work on the engines was sound but without the boldness and inspiration of his father.

Then there is also Oleg Losev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Losev) who invented a transistor radio in the 1920th so you might look him up. I used him in my own timeline to improve radio technology.
 
Have someone important and brilliant meet Babbage's son Henry Babbage post 1900. He is interested in the idea and Babbage shows him his fathers old plans and realizes the potential of the original Analytical Engine.

Some information about Henry Babbage:
Henry Prevost Babbage (1824-1918) was Charles Babbage and Georgiana Whitmore's youngest son. As teenagers he and his brother Dugald spent time in Babbage's drawing office and workshop learning workshop skills. Henry later acquired a sound grasp of the Difference and Analytical Engine designs, and came to form a close bond with his father whom he visited on furlough from extended military service in India. Babbage bequeathed his drawings, workshop and the surviving physical relics of the engines to Henry who tried to continue his father's work and to publicize the engines after Babbage's death. He was at his father's bedside when Babbage died in 1871.
There is no continuous line of development from Babbage to the electronic era and Henry is one of the bridging figures. From 1872 Henry continued diligently with his father's work and then intermittently in retirement in 1875. He assembled about six small demonstration pieces for Difference Engine No. 1 one of which he sent to Harvard. In the 1930s the piece attracted the attention of Howard Aiken, pioneer of the Harvard Mk. I, a program-controlled calculator. Aiken wrote that on seeing the piece 'he felt that Babbage was addressing him personally from the past'. Henry also built an experimental four-function calculator for the Mill for the Analytical Engine, completing it in 1910 when he was eighty-six years old. His work on the engines was sound but without the boldness and inspiration of his father.

Then there is also Oleg Losev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Losev) who invented a transistor radio in the 1920th so you might look him up. I used him in my own timeline to improve radio technology.


Thank you both for bring both of them. I will check both.

I wonder if Henry Babbage's work would have interested Herman Hollerith...
 
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