Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation

by Steven Johnson

Consider the legendary Analytical Engine designed by nineteenth-century British inventor Charles Babbage, who is considered by most technology historians to be the father of modern computing, though he should probably be called the great-grandfather of modern computing, because it took several generations for the world to catch up to his idea. Babbage is actually in the pantheon for two inventions, neither of which he managed to build during his lifetime. The first was his Difference Engine, a fantastically complex fifteen-ton contraption, with over 25,000 mechanical parts, designed to calculate polynomial functions that were essential to creating the trigonometric tables crucial to navigation. Had Babbage actually completed his project, the Difference Engine would have been the world’s most advanced mechanical calculator. When the London Science Museum constructed one from Babbage’s plans to commemorate the centennial of his death, the machine returned accurate results to thirty-one places in a matter of seconds. Both the speed and precision of the device would have exceeded anything else possible in Babbage’s time by several orders of magnitude.