How the Difference Engine Was Improved by Charles Babbage

The jump to computational universality should have happened in the 18 twenties. The mathematician charles babbage designed a device that he called the difference engine which represented decimal digits by cogs, each of which could click into one of ten positions. His original purpose was to automate the production of tables of mathematical functions such as logarithms and co signs. Neither they, nor any one else, for over a century afterwards, imagined to day's most common uses of computation,. Such as the internet, word processing, databy, searching in games.