What Does Charles Babbage Mean?
Charles Babbage was an English mathematician and inventor who is widely credited for coming up with the concept of a programmed computer. Babbage was born in 1791, a time when computer actually meant a person who computes manually.
Educated as a mathematician, Babbage noticed - as have many others since - that larger operations could be broken down into simpler, smaller stages. However, whether it was a small calculation or a large one, human error would always be a risk.
Babbage envisioned a machine with an input device, storage, a processor, a control unit and an output device, essentially a basic modern computer. This machine would be able to handle the basic calculations, thus eliminating human error. Although never completed, Babbage's Analytical Engine would have run on punch cards containing programs that could be run in a loop, allowing it to carry out any calculations that the programmer could design for it.
Babbage also did work in the field of cryptography, breaking Vigenere's autokey cipher.
