1791-1871. British mathematician, engineer, and inventor.
Designed the Difference Engine, a mechanical calculator for polynomial evaluation.
Designed the Analytical Engine, the first general-purpose computation machine with memory, processor, and conditional branching.
The Analytical Engine anticipated the von Neumann architecture by over a century.
Collaborated with Ada Lovelace, who documented the machine's programming potential.
Father of the computer: his designs contain every essential element of modern digital machines.
Demonstrated that computation is a physical process that can be mechanized and automated.