Charles Babbage

(Newser) - Quick when was the first programmable computer designed? If you said the early 19th century … well, you probably looked at the headline. But you might be right, and researchers in Britain are currently planning to test that theory. They’re about to spend 10 years and millions of dollars...

(Newser) - An unusually large calculator is on display for the next six months at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The massive machine is a “difference engine,” a mechanical calculator to determine polynomial functions designed (but never built) by 19th-century inventor Charles Babbage. London’s Science Museum...