Dr Swade said that a researcher would also be needed to decipher Babbage's drawings and nomenclature.
Just as Babbage had proposed, the machine was employed to calculate astronomical and mathematical tables.
Perhaps the fact that Hollerith is forgotten, while Babbage is remembered, should not be so surprising after all.
That suggests that, even had Babbage succeeded, a Victorian computer revolution based on mechanical technology would not necessarily have followed.
So much for the suggestion that the information age would have been jump-started had Babbage succeeded in seducing Parliament yet again.
On the Babbage platform 55 miles off the east coast they produce enough gas in a day to fill the Olympic Stadium in London four times over.
Modern computerisation projects, in contrast, tend to have far more in common with Babbage's ill-fated attempt to build a mechanical computer, which cost a fortune and was eventually abandoned.
Allowing for inflation, this is roughly a third of what it might have cost to build in Babbage's day in contrast to the cost of electronic-computer technology, which halves in price every 18 months.
It is a nice irony that Babbage's plans should be realised only thanks to an infusion of cash from a man who got rich in the computer revolution that Babbage helped to foment.
The man who ultimately did, Charles Babbage, was as much the Renaissance man as Alberti--he also invented the speedometer, the cowcatcher and the mortality tables that are the basis of today's life insurance.
Mr. Babbage, author of the report, contends that Australia can no longer afford to maintain a military focused mainly on participating in peacekeeping operations, as it is doing in East Timor, and on training foreign military forces, as it is in Afghanistan.
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