1842 CHARLES BABBAGE

Charles Babbage is admired by computerists because he was the first person to realize that a computing machine must be composed of an input device (he used a card reader inspired by Jacquard's punched cards for looms), a memory (which he called the mill), and an output device (he used a printer). For this machined diagram he is indeed the grandfather of the digital computers. He convinced the British government to finance the project. Many years later and many British pounds later, he still hadn't finished the machine. He was a failure, but the overall picture is, he laid the foundation for a computing device. Babbage's efforts to construct a computing machine piqued the interest of Ada August, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron. He depleted his own funds, government grants, and the inheritance on a bet based on their system for winning horse races. They failed. Apparently, "winning at the track is far more difficult than designing a computer."