Donoho Colloquium: Babbage's Analytical Engine

The Spring 2012 Donoho Colloquium

• 5:00 PM, Tuesday, May 8, 2012
• Oopik Auditorium, Life Sciences Center, Dartmouth

Doron Swade, Visiting Professor, University of Portsmouth, UK, gave the spring 2012 Donoho Colloquium on Tuesday, May 8, 2012, at 5:00 PM in the Oopik Auditorium, Life Sciences Center. His topic, "Mission Impossible: Constructing Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine," provided an overview of Babbage's pioneering work on automatic computing, located his work in its historical context, and described the scale, scope and planned outcomes for the construction of the Analytical Engine.

Biographical Note

Doron Swade (MBE, PhD, MSc, C.Eng, FBCS, CITP) is an engineer, historian, and museum professional. He studied physics, electronics engineering, philosophy of science, machine intelligence, and history, at various universities including Cambridge University and University College London. He is a leading authority on the life and work of computer pioneer Charles Babbage and masterminded the successful construction of the first complete Babbage calculating engine built to original 19th-century designs. He lectures widely and has authored three books (one co-authored) and over eighty scholarly and popular articles on Charles Babbage, history of computing, curatorship, and museology. He is currently Visiting Professor (History of Computing) at Portsmouth University, and Research Fellow (Hon) (Computer Science) at Royal Holloway University of London. He was formerly Visiting Professor (Interaction Design) at the Royal College of Art, Assistant Director & Head of Collections at the Science Museum, London, and Senior Curator of Computing. He was awarded an MBE for Services to the History of Computing in 2009.

For information about the ongoing effort: plan28.org