JOY FEELINGS MAGAZINE December 2015 | Page 286

shells accurately or
calculating taxes.

Oldest known computer

It was, in fact, a mammoth
number-crunching project that
inspired Babbage in the first
place [source: CampbellKelly]. Napoleon Bonaparte
initiated the project in 1790,
when he ordered a switch from

the old imperial system of
measurements to the new
metric system. For 10 years,
scores of human computers
made the necessary
conversions and completed the
tables. Bonaparte was never
able to publish the tables,
however, and they sat
collecting dust in the Académie
des sciences in Paris.
In 1819, Babbage visited the
City of Light and viewed the
unpublished manuscript with
page after page of tables. If
only, he wondered, there was a
way to produce such tables
faster, with less manpower and
fewer mistakes. He thought of
the many marvels generated by
the Industrial Revolution. If
creative and hardworking
inventors could develop the
cotton gin and the steam
locomotive, then why not a
machine to make calculations
[source: Campbell-Kelly]?
Babbage returned to England
and decided to build just such a
machine. His first vision was
something he dubbed
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