The same cannot be said of Babbage’s other brilliant idea: the Analytical Engine, the great unfulfilled project of Babbage’s career, which he toiled on for the last thirty years of his life. The machine was so complicated that it never got past the blueprint stage, save a small portion that Babbage built shortly before his death in 1871. The Analytical Engine was—on paper, at least—the world’s first programmable computer.
