imagine if this actaully had funding
Imagine if this actaully had funding
Luke Adams
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Ryan Ramirez
It did, but Babbage was too much of an autist to secure funding that didn't fall through eventually.
Luke Turner
wow just imagine if this think actually was patented.
Andrew Butler
but can it run DOOM though. ha ha ha ha (13.6k likes, 2.4k retweets)
Nathan Williams
O U
Robert Barnes
wat is it?
Nathaniel Smith
it never had a use and never will
Cameron Price
>general purpose computers never had a use and never will
Andrew Collins
updoot
Chase Reed
turing machine would've been invented anyway which had the real computing power
Connor Rogers
Okay this one is pretty clever.
Chase Lewis
Babbage fought for a long time to secure the first round of funding on the Difference Engines. He had to approach the topic from the perspective of "how will this make us sail ships better or fight wars" because the government didn't give a fuck about science for science. Keep in mind England in general had rapidly fell behind the continent in science and math in Babbage's lifetime. There are many reasons why but one particular reason was because in the Newton vs Leibniz debate, England obviously sided with Newton, regarded Leibniz a plagiarizer, and refused to acknowledge his work or any writings using his syntax. Continental Europe mostly went the opposite direction.
Anyway, funding was the death of the machines in the end. It was mostly a result of disputes with Babbage's machinist Joseph Clement. The analytical machines required thousands of custom machine parts and Babbage spent much of his government funding on the tools for Clement to work as well as a stipend for him. Clement basically realized there was no rush for him to finish the project since he'd be getting paid anyway and any negotiation would be in his favor because at that time all of the tools purchased in a project would belong to the machinist. Clement also held the blueprints of the analytical machines hostage claiming they were also part of his work. The two men has a falling out and the government was skeptical about giving Babbage any more money because they hadn't seen any promises results and it looked like the money was all blown on Clement's tools. Sad time for computer history
Chase Walker
TL;DR: people being greedy dicks held back progress
COLOUR ME SURPRISED
Michael Phillips
imagine if this actaully had funding
Jeremiah Cooper
He should have just used strings hooks and weights.
Hudson Walker
Imagine if he had finished the difference engine instead of stopping halfway and spending most of the money on your pic related. The brits gave him a lot of money (enough money to build two or three warships IIRC), when he failed to deliver they stopped supporting him.
James Collins
This.
He's like all you autistic programmers on here who start new projects but never finish any - yes I'm talking about you.
David Scott
> just
Juan Cox
With that I don't think you can use the output from one gate as the input for a different gate though.
Dylan Ward
But what if mechanical computers became so successful they never bothered switching to electronics?
Then we would never have had a "Moore's law" type of advancement.
John Kelly
Take all of my upvotes xd
Charles Miller
>what if vacuum tubes were so sucesful they never bothered switching to eletronics?
This is literally you.
There are limits to both size and speed in mechanical components that would prompt the search for something better when people started to feel mechanical wasn't cutting it anymore