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The Origins of the First Computer: Charles Babbage's Vision
How Babbage's Analytical Engine planned a store, a mill and punched-card control a century before electronic computers, and why it was never finished.
People and Ideas
Early Visions
The first ideas about programmable machines, algorithms and thinking computers.
A Look at the History of Artificial Intelligence
From ancient stories of thinking machines through the 1956 Dartmouth workshop to modern machine learning, a history of AI's cycles of hope and disappointment.
Charles Babbage: The Father of the Computer
A short biography of Charles Babbage, his Difference and Analytical Engines, and why calling him the father of the computer is a popular simplification.
The History of Artificial Intelligence: A Computing Pioneer
How learning-based AI, especially neural networks, rose, fell and returned from the 1950s onward, and why each cycle of optimism ended in disappointment.
The History of the Computer Algorithm: A Computing Milestone
How the idea of the algorithm grew from ancient arithmetic procedures and al-Khwarizmi to the programs that ran on the first electronic computers.
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