Charles Babbage Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Considered by some to be a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage's analytical engine. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century. Parts of Babbage's incomplete
History of computing The 1937 Atanasoff–Berry computer design was the first digital electronic computer (though not programmable), and the Z3 computer from 1941, by German inventor Konrad Zuse was the first working programmable, fully automatic computing machine. Alan Turing modelled computation in terms of a one-dimensional storage tape, leading to the idea of the Turing machine and Turing-complete programming systems. During World War II, ballistics computing was done by women, who were hired as "computers." The term computer remained one that referred to mostly women (now seen as "operator") until 1945, after which it took on the modern definition of machinery it presently