Finish the Work of Ada LoveLace and Charles Babbage  Finish the Work of Ada LoveLace and Charles Babbage

go to home page Student Projects full screen, hide local find menu Google search web for more information on this topic jump to foot of page translate this page with Babelfish by Roedy Green ©1996-2009 Canadian Mind Products
This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; I have too many other projects of my own.

I do contract work for a living, which could include writing a program such as this. However, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavor.

Back in 1830 Lovelace and Babbage worked on an analytical engine, mechanical computer. In theory it would have been capable of computing Bernouli numbers. The gears of the day were not precise enough and had to much friction, so the machine never worked. Your job is to complete the project in two possible ways:
  1. Discover all you can about the analytical engine, and create a simulator for it. Your simulator could merely simulate it programming language, or it could be so elaborate as to provide a 3D view of the internal workings of its perfect gears whirring about from any point of view, or like being a mouse in the clockworks.
  2. Using modern high accuracy machining and materials, actually build a mechanical analytical engine.
When you are done, surely many museums would be interested in the result.

In a related project, the ancient Mayans had a mechanical calculator for doing calendar calculations. Some people have made computer simulations.

Other early computers you might like to simulate:

Eniac Simulator
Partial 6502 CPU simulator
Virtual Machine
Z80 emulators

CMP homejump to top
CMP logo
feedback Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, broken/redirected link reports
and suggestions to improve this page to Roedy Green : feedback email
made with CSS
HTML Checked!
ICRA ratings logo
mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
Your face IP:[38.103.63.58]
You are visitor number 6,781.
You can get a fresh copy of this page from: or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror)
http://mindprod.com/project/lovelace.html J:\mindprod\project\lovelace.html