What if Charles Babbage had completed his Difference Engine before 1830?

It was not programmable, nor, strictly, a computer, It was a large mechanical calculator.

I remember using a desktop "modern" version , a Facit I think, in the early 1950s. One ended up with a very tired arm after a while, they were hand cranked.

Babbages later analytical engine could have been termed programmable, though still a calculator, since it used Jacquard loom cards.

Effects if he had built a full size one ? Very little. Clerks were cheap, the engines very expensive because the engineering precision needed was right on the limits of Victorian capability, and the only way to tell if the parts were precise was to assemble them, carry out a series of test calculations,disassemble, replace bits, retry, rinse lather repeat. Many times. Very expensive.
 
Your probably right, but I don't think disregarding the idea completely is reasonable.

1. The first electrical computers were also massive, expensive and only used for code breaking.

2. I didn't mean that the adverage working man or even large companies would buy them, at least not immediately, Government would help develop the tech further, see the development of the early modern computer, and they would get cheaper and more powerful as they were further developed.
 
I think it will have little impact initially because of the cost and delicate nature. It's real uses are along the same lines as IBM's original machines, used in censuses and very high volume record keeping. Areas where speed isn't necessarily improved by throwing more clerks at it. As the machines are improved over the decades however I can see their use expanding into larger business applications. They're not going to become a mechanical PC but they're definitely going to be used the same way punch card machines were used decades ago.

What it will do is introduce the foundation of computing a century early. More complex applications like mechanical fire-control for navy ships will arise decades earlier than in OTL. The same goes for the truly elegant mechanical calculators that started appearing in first half of the 20th century.
 
Babbage's difference engine, if completed, wouldn't have had any major impact on the world whatsoever. It's a lot like Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machines. His glider was very nearly feasible. But if he'd actually built one - so what? A few people could have flown very short distances at great personal risk. The basic idea that people can fly doesn't instantly result in transcontinental supersonic airliners!

Similarly, a clockwork computer cannot get around the fact that, in order to have any significant computing power at all, it has to be absolutely massive! The difference engine Babbage proposed would have been about the size of a barn, with a memory of about 1Mb. And there's absolutely no way that Victorian technology could have made it more efficient. Britain built the world's first electronic computer because it was willing to throw stupid amounts of money at a code-breaking problem it absolutely had to solve because at the time nothing mattered except beating Hitler. Which was quite a few years later.

Meanwhile... I'm afraid I totally forget who this obscure guy was, or where he came from, but it was round about Norway, so let's say Norway. Our hero was very nearly as smart as Charles Babbage (or possibly more so), and when he visited him in London, he totally understood how the proposed difference engine was supposed to work, while also catching on that Babbage's obsessive-compulsive mania for using only the very best materials was counter-productive. So he built a simplified but fully functional difference engine using much cheaper mass-produced parts, which was used to map the insanely complex Norwegian coast. And because at the time this was a huge military secret, the government of Norway covered it up while giving him a medal. And...

Er, well, actually, nothing. A fairly effective clockwork computer was never anything more than a toy major governments could afford, but even they wouldn't have bothered unless they needed it for a specific purpose so complex that hiring a few hundred clerks to crunch numbers wasn't more cost-effective. Computers are almost irrelevant unless you can build a surprisingly small and cheap one - at which point they suddenly matter rather a lot.

Babbage's computer is overrated because he never actually built it. "Hey, computers have changed everything, and this guy sort of invented the computer, so if he'd actually built one, it would've been 1980 in 1890 and..."

Er, actually, no.
 
The computers were developed in the 1940s out of necessity- they needed them to calculate (crack codes, calculate large numbers, etc) during the time of warfare. It being expensive is not a matter when the government supports it.
So all we need is a situation where computers are necessary in the 1830s- a warfare, perhaps, between anybody and Britain that has extensive usage of rocket science and/or code cracking. Which would be hard, I presume.
 
The difference engine Babbage proposed would have been about the size of a barn, with a memory of about 1Mb.

If it manages that, its roughly as strong, if not slightly stronger than some of the first computers used just after WWII ... back then computers were basicly glorified calculators ... hell ... being a 'computer' was actually a profession back in the day, which was about calculating stuff
 
Babbage's difference engine, if completed, wouldn't have had any major impact on the world whatsoever.

Why not. Its like saying if people had discovered how to forge iron a millennia earlier, it would have made no difference to when steel forging was first done.

What if the British government had developed a mechanical computer to target the guns on their warships? What if some of the great physicists/universities wanted one to help with advanced mathematical calculations?

That is if it stayed in British hands. What if the Union had all of there ironclads outfitted with a mechanical targeting device? What if they gave a smaller version to just a few of there artillery batteries? Couldn't the want for a smaller, cheaper and better working version cause the Union government to import all the best of these mechanical computer scientists from Europe? Even if it hadn't caused any difference in the Civil War it would have cause many butterflies by the end of it.

How can you say that it would have no effect on the world. That is not only like killing the butterflies, but burning and salting there homes to.
 
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What if the British government had developed a mechanical computer to target the guns on their warships? What if some of the great physicists/universities wanted one to help with advanced mathematical calculations?

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Uh, in 1830 ? Have you ever looked at an 1830 cannon. Good luck with hooking that up to a computer. As to the physicists, they were still grappling with Napier's Bones.

It would make very little difference , because it was too soon for its time. Clerks were cheap, analytic engines expensive. At most, more reliable sailing instructions might have prevented a few ships being lost.

It's not a computer the way that you think 'computer'. In fact, it's actually just a huge abacus, really.
 
Originally Posted by Kingdom
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What if the British government had developed a mechanical computer to target the guns on their warships? What if some of the great physicists/universities wanted one to help with advanced mathematical calculations?

....
Uh, in 1830 ? Have you ever looked at an 1830 cannon. Good luck with hooking that up to a computer. As to the physicists, they were still grappling with Napier's Bones.

It would make very little difference , because it was too soon for its time. Clerks were cheap, analytic engines expensive. At most, more reliable sailing instructions might have prevented a few ships being lost.

It's not a computer the way that you think 'computer'. In fact, it's actually just a huge abacus, really.

I ment as somthing to calculate distance, trajectory, ect. Not as an automatic targeting system and I also didn't it would have been put on a ship the day it was finished. It would have needed many more years, or decades, before it would have been outfitted on British ships.

Also the origional quesion was what would have been differant if Babbage had completed his differance engine, not could a computer have been hooked up to a cannon from 1830.

Finally the reason Babbage tried to build his differance engine was to make calculations, like the ones using Napier's Bones, quicker and more reliable.
 
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Astronomy?

Precise computations are important for astronomy--perhaps a significantly increased concern for the asteroids and comets after 1876 might encourage the diffrence engine and analytical engine out of the dusty times and build one? (My timeline involving a large metyeorite impact will result in a greatly increased concern for calculating trajectories...as in, the US Navy is geting involved--and <GASP> actually geting funding for it...)
 
What is your timeline called?

Precise computations are important for astronomy--perhaps a significantly increased concern for the asteroids and comets after 1876

I don't know the significance of 1876 but I do know the British were very interested in astronomy in Victorian times, not sure if that interest survived that long though.
 
What is your timeline called?



I don't know the significance of 1876 but I do know the British were very interested in astronomy in Victorian times, not sure if that interest survived that long though.

I'm starting to revise a timeline I called "Reach for the Skies," in which a large rock blasts a crater over a mile wide out of New Hampshire's White Mountains. The significance of 1876 is that the rock h9ts on June 6 of that year...
 
In the USA first electronic computers were used for calculating gunnery tables. HOWEVER this was for large rifles and had to compensate for curvature of the earth, moving targets, and also throw in factors like temperature, humidity, winds. Artillery of the 19th century, up until the very end, had no need of such calculations - in 1830 all artillery fire was direct, and with smoothbore cannon. So no military use for such computations until at least 1900 or so.
 
All artillery fire was direct, and with smoothbore cannon.

Not completely corect, in the American Civil War they used howitzers, cannons that fire at an angle, both as seige and field
artillery.

So a incomplete list of things that would have been changed are physics/mathematics, astronomy and later artilery, and possibly navel, warfare.
 
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