First general-purpose computing device

Charles Babbage , an English mechanical engineer and polymath , originated the thought of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer ", [16] he conceptualized and invented the initial mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After taking care of his revolutionary difference engine , designed to aid in navigational data, in 1833 he realized that a much more general layout, anAnalytical Engine , was possible. The input of programs and data was being provided to the machine via punched cards , a method being used during the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom . Regarding output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter plus a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards being read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic product , control flow in the form of conditional branching and also loops , and integrated memory , making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that might be described in modern terms as Turing-complete . [17] [18]
The device was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine must be made by hand - this was a major problem to get a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with all the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to perform the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to difficulties not merely of politics and financing, but also to his desire to produce an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than someone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version with the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a prosperous demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.