FACTUAL REFERENCE
BABBAGE ANALYTICAL ENGINE

After the Difference Engine project, Babbage conceived the more ambitious
Analytical Engine. It is historically significant because its architecture moved
beyond a single-purpose tabulator toward a programmable general-purpose calculating
machine.

Descriptions of the design distinguish a "store" for numbers from a "mill" for
operations, concepts often compared to memory and processing. Punched-card ideas
were used in the control scheme.

The machine was not completed in Babbage's lifetime, so it is important not to
write history as though Victorians had a working general-purpose computer on the
floor. The achievement was the design concept itself.

The leap is conceptual:
Not merely "build a machine for this table," but "build a machine whose operation
can be changed by instructions."