Charles Babbage was a visionary mathematician and engineer whose unfinished machines laid the conceptual foundations of modern computing. Brilliant, exacting, and frequently at odds with his contemporaries, he imagined programmable calculation long before the technology existed to realise it.
The Analytical Engine was a 19th-century concept that transformed the idea of calculation into something far more powerful: a programmable process governed by logic and instruction. Conceived by Charles Babbage and profoundly interpreted by Ada Lovelace, the engine anticipated many of the principles that define modern computing—long before the technology existed to build it.
The Difference Engine was a 19th-century mechanical calculating machine designed to eliminate errors from mathematical tables by automating repetitive computation. Conceived by Charles Babbage, it demonstrated that precise calculation could be delegated to machinery, laying important groundwork for later developments in computing.