Comparison To Other Early Computers
If the Analytical Engine had been built, it would have been digital, programmable and Turing-complete. However, it would have been very slow. Ada Lovelace reported in her notes on the Analytical Engine: "Mr. Babbage believes he can, by his engine, form the product of two numbers, each containing twenty figures, in three minutes". By comparison the Harvard Mark I could perform the same task in just six seconds. A modern PC can do the same thing in well under a millionth of a second.
| Name | First operational | Numeral system | Computing mechanism | Programming | Turing complete |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analytical Engine | Never built | Decimal | Mechanical | Program-controlled by punched cards | Yes |
| Zuse Z3 (Germany) | May 1941 | Binary floating point | Electro-mechanical | Program-controlled by punched 35 mm film stock (but no conditional branch) | Yes (1998) |
| Atanasoff–Berry Computer (US) | 1942 | Binary | Electronic | Single purpose; not programmable | No |
| Colossus Mark 1 (UK) | February 1944 | Binary | Electronic | Program-controlled by patch cables and switches | No |
| Harvard Mark I – IBM ASCC (US) | May 1944 | Decimal | Electro-mechanical | Program-controlled by 24-channel punched paper tape (but no conditional branch) | No |
| ENIAC (US) | July 1946 | Decimal | Electronic | Program-controlled by patch cables and switches | Yes |
Read more about this topic: Analytical Engine
Famous quotes containing the words comparison and/or early:
“The difference between human vision and the image perceived by the faceted eye of an insect may be compared with the difference between a half-tone block made with the very finest screen and the corresponding picture as represented by the very coarse screening used in common newspaper pictorial reproduction. The same comparison holds good between the way Gogol saw things and the way average readers and average writers see things.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)