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 core store, and used five-hole paper tape for input and output, and magnetic tape for data storage. The world's first transistorised computer was the Manchester Transistor Computer, operational in 1953. The 1955 Harwell CADET is a contender for the title of first fully transistorised computer. Many of the early transistorised computers used valves for non-computing elements such as the power supply and clock. RREAC used ALGOL 60 as its programming language - the first computer language to use nested functions, and the ancestor of some of today's main programming languages. Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer The Royal Radar Establishment Automatic