The British scientist Charles Babbage (1791-1871) designed mechanical calculating machines many years before the computer age. Babbage lived during the Victorian era, when mathematicians compiled huge books of tables for use in multiplication,...

Although the abacus, the first tool of calculation, has existed since ancient times, advanced calculating machines did not appear until the early 1600s. Scientists and mathematicians were determined to simplify complex astronomical and navigational...

A calculating machine is a machine designed to come up with calculations (i.e. computations); the most famous is probably the Victorian British scientist Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (No. 2), designed in the 1840s but never completed in the...

Does the man make the machine? Or the machine make the man? A pilot can't fly without a plane. A doctor can't diagnose without a centrifuge. A photographer can't create without a camera. And except in the simplest circumstances, the reverse is...

The business of busy beavers Start with a string of zeros and ones printed on a strip of tape and a device that reads, prints and erases symbols. The device scans the tape and, following a set of precise instructions, makes appropriate...