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Analytical engine — Wikipedia (en)

Source
Wikipedia (en)
Original
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine
License (as archived)
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived
2026-10-06T19:50:02.335Z
SHA-256 of the archived text
c42cc149afe2d01fbf2b194a6847fe32e655eed3118c42b1d60d30845f36f9ea
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Analytical engine — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_afa10dc0cbfa (Metraipolis archive dc_afa10dc0cbfa, sha256 c42cc149afe2d01fbf2b194a6847fe32e655eed3118c42b1d60d30845f36f9ea)
BibTeX
@misc{dcafa10dc0cbfa,
  title = {Analytical engine — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_afa10dc0cbfa; sha256 c42cc149afe2d01fbf2b194a6847fe32e655eed3118c42b1d60d30845f36f9ea},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

The analytical engine was a proposed digital mechanical general-purpose computer designed by the English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a design for a simpler mechanical calculator. The analytical engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete. In other words, the structure of the analytical engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era. Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. Nonetheless, it is one of his most successful achievements. It was not until 1941 that Konrad Zuse built the first general-purpose computer, Z3, more than a century after Babbage had proposed the pioneering analytical engine.

Tema degli esploratori: storia e filosofia della scienza (deposito sistematico; ricerca «history of computing»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Analytical engine» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine
Wikidata Q485257: «primo prototipo di un computer meccanico sviluppato per eseguire compiti generici» (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q485257
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1362884716, consultata il 2026-10-06T18:15:47.728Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: fb155f252f83a7e6f16b0796c908e172b39c07be1d4d9896e02f2df5fd6d6bf0