WI Babbage’s Analytic Engine was built in the 1840s?

Thinking back to reading The Difference Engine I asked the above question. There has to be a thread similar to this already but I haven’t been able to find it so far.

“Though exactly how it came to their attention is unknown, through an argument among the Royals whether it would actually work the designs for the Analytic Engine are funded to completion.”

What effect would this of had on History? Was the world simply unready to utilize it?
Would the British Government of simply used it to print mathematical tables as had been the purpose OTL for funding it’s unfinished predecessor the Difference Engine?

Are there any places it would have a better chance of making a difference being the world’s first general purpose computer? I’m trying to think of an industry that could use it in 1840 but I can’t readily think of one. Could the Analytic Engine of been a technologic marvel at Oxford for a few academics to use, a few eccentrics to improve upon? Perhaps so improved upon and such a time saving device that Analytic Engines start spreading to other universities. Could it of been a tool for artillery calculation?
 
Don't see as much benefit for the military as peacetime. Maybe better calculation machines would lead to streamlining of other tedious math thereby contributing to increase progress the rate of in other fields (and a decline in arithmetic ability).
 
Well, it would definitely be used for artillery tables. I mean, that was basically how Babbage sold it to the Admiralty.

As for other uses...the analytic engine was expensive. As I recall, it required special materials and a lot of labor to assemble. I believe the Admiralty cancelled the project after expenses exceeded the cost of two ships of the line or something similar. So there may be a handful in the country (one for the Admiralty, maybe a second for the Admiralty, one for the Royal Society, one each at Oxford and Cambridge, maybe one in Edinburgh if the Scots feel left out and raise some cash), that may end up being used by various scientists (I bet Michael Faraday and Lord Kelvin would have loved access to an analytic engine), with an enormous queue, much like supercomputers were in the very earliest days.

But unlike OTL computing, there's not going to be the advent of the electrical transistor, allowing computers to become ever-cheaper. For at least half a century or so, the engine's going to stay the same exorbitant price. Still, it could have some very definite effects on the advance of science within the Empire, and may also aid their military successes.
 
Well, it would definitely be used for artillery tables. I mean, that was basically how Babbage sold it to the Admiralty.

As for other uses...the analytic engine was expensive. As I recall, it required special materials and a lot of labor to assemble. I believe the Admiralty cancelled the project after expenses exceeded the cost of two ships of the line or something similar. So there may be a handful in the country (one for the Admiralty, maybe a second for the Admiralty, one for the Royal Society, one each at Oxford and Cambridge, maybe one in Edinburgh if the Scots feel left out and raise some cash), that may end up being used by various scientists (I bet Michael Faraday and Lord Kelvin would have loved access to an analytic engine), with an enormous queue, much like supercomputers were in the very earliest days.

But unlike OTL computing, there's not going to be the advent of the electrical transistor, allowing computers to become ever-cheaper. For at least half a century or so, the engine's going to stay the same exorbitant price. Still, it could have some very definite effects on the advance of science within the Empire, and may also aid their military successes.

In Universities, perhaps large numbers of students with chalkboards to do calculations would be cheaper.
 
Don't see as much benefit for the military as peacetime. Maybe better calculation machines would lead to streamlining of other tedious math thereby contributing to increase progress the rate of in other fields (and a decline in arithmetic ability).

The first military use would be calculating artillery ranging tables. That was extremely tedious, but necessary, work and needed to be done for every combination of gun and shell and wind and so forth. Eventually, someone from the RN will put an analytical engine on a ship to calculate ranges dynamically, thus driving miniaturization and so forth.

This is, BTW, precisely parallel to OTL, where the pinnacle of pre-WWII military computers were actually on battleships, only to be overtaken by land-based computers for cryptography and nuclear bomb making...

EDIT: Minchandre beat me to it
 
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