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# Can we use crowdsourcing to recreate a legendary punch card computer?
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/can-we-use-crowdsourcing-a-legendary-punch-card-computer/
- Published: 2011-11-21T22:55:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T15:29:37.000Z
- Description: In the 1830s, a mathematician named Charles Babbage drew up a set of plans for a programmable machine that ran off of punch cards. He called it an “Analytical Engine.” Everyone thought he was crazy. A hundred years later, somebody created basically the same thing that Babbage designed and called it
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/cu/computinghistory/a04.jpg)

In the 1830s, a mathematician named Charles Babbage drew up a set of plans for a programmable machine that ran off of punch cards. He called it an “Analytical Engine.” Everyone thought he was crazy. A hundred years later, somebody created basically the same thing that Babbage designed and called it a computer.

Now, British scientists are tackling the question of whether or not Babbage’s design could possibly be built, using crowdsourcing to fill in the gaps:

> The hope is to “crowd-source” the analysis of what should be built; plans will be posted online next year, and the public will be invited to offer suggestions.  
>  
> “There is no single set of plans that design a single machine.” said Tim Robinson, a docent at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. “It was constantly in a state of flux.”  
>  
> The project is significant in part because there has been a heated debate over whether – given time and resources – Babbage would have been able to build the machine he foresaw.

If open source strategies can yield *Minecraft*, they can definitely make this happen. Just saying.

*\-Drew Millard*

\[[via](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/science/computer-experts-building-1830s-babbage-analytical-engine.html?pagewanted=1&%5Fr=1&ref=technology)\]\[[image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/cu/computinghistory/a04.jpg?ref=killscreen.com)\]