Babbage's Analytical Engine Plans 28 and 28a. The programmer's interface

Between 1843 and 1846 Charles Babbage worked intensively on the design of Plan 28 of his Analytical Engine. Most of his effort was devoted to the development of the great operations of multiplication, division, and addition/subtraction of strings of operands. These were carefully elaborated, and the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE annals of the history of computing 2000-10, Vol.22 (4), p.5-19
Main Author: Bromley, A.G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arithmetic
Automatic control
Computation
Computer architecture
Computer industry
Computers
Concrete
Difference engines
Division
Engines
Information analysis
Mathematical analysis
Multiplication
Programmers
Programming profession
Steady-state
Strings
Subtraction
Terminology
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Summary:Between 1843 and 1846 Charles Babbage worked intensively on the design of Plan 28 of his Analytical Engine. Most of his effort was devoted to the development of the great operations of multiplication, division, and addition/subtraction of strings of operands. These were carefully elaborated, and the implementations of both multiplication and division have a decidedly modern flavor. Some of Babbage's time was spent on small operations including implementations of conditional branches. Here we find revealed for the first time a workable, if unpolished, user instruction set for the programmer of his Analytical Engine.
ISSN:1058-6180
1934-1547
DOI:10.1109/85.887986