The Difference Engine was conceived to aid in the creation of tables, which were used by the banking and trading industries.  The machine would shorten the length of the work immensely and would require less manpower.  Babbage never actually constructed his Difference Engine, but laid out an elaborate plan for it.  The machine was eventually completed in 1990 by London’s Science Museum.  The completed engine, made according to Babbage’s plans, worked as he had planned. 

 Babbage began working on his Analytical Engine, an advanced version of the Difference Engine, before the Difference Engine was complete.  The analytical engine would have been capable of taking instructions from punch cards, and would have been the most powerful computer constructed up to that date.  Babbage could not overcome the technical difficulties of the machine, and it was never constructed.  Some historians have predicted that had he perfected his design, the computer age would have dawned much sooner.  The difference would have been  that it would have been mechanical instead of digital. 

Next : 1884 -Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his automatic punch card tabulator

All material and images on these pages are copyright Joseph and Ed. This page was developed for the Thinkquest1999 competition.