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
Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer Atanasoff–Berry Computer in 1942. ENIAC was built in 1946 at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC and Colossus both claim to be the world's first electronic computer. Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) ran its first programs on 6 May 1949 at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory about a month after the Manchester Mark 1 was put to research work at the University of Manchester. In May 1952 Geoffrey Dummer thought up the idea of the integrated circuit at the TRE, the former name of the RRE. By April 1962 there were 323