< history > A design for a general-purpose digital computer proposed by Charles Babbage in 1837 as a successor to his earlier special-purpose Difference Engine .
The Analytical Engine was to be built from brass gears powered by steam with input given on punched cards . Babbage could never secure enough funding to build it, and so it was, and never has been, constructed.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/ .
(1998-10-19)