Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey, Brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is another classic Brain Stuff episode.

In this one, we dig into the history of computers.

Although the first one was designed in the 1800s, it wouldn't be built for another 150

years.

Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here?

Who invented the first computer?

One could argue that the abacus was the first computer, or it's dissented to the slide

rule invented by William Outred in 1622.

But the first computer resembling today's modern machines was the analytical engine, a

device conceived and designed by British mathematician Charles Babbage between 1833 and 1871.

Before Babbage came along, our computers were people who sat around all day, adding and

subtracting numbers and entering the results into tables.

The tables then appeared in books so that other people could use them to complete tasks,

such as launching artillery shells accurately or calculating taxes.

It was, in fact, a mammoth number crunching project that inspired Babbage in the first

place.

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 ten years, scores of human computers made the necessary conversions and completed

the tables.

Babbage was never able to publish the tables, however, and they sat collecting dust in

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