In 1822, Charles Babbage, a British mathematician, proposed the idea of a programmable computer. This machine would be able to perform any calculation that could be done by hand. Babbage worked on the design of this machine for over forty years, but he never finished building it.

In the last few years, there has been a lot of progress on building a computer based on Babbage’s design. In 2011, the Science Museum in London completed a working model of Babbage’s machine called the Difference Engine.

Now, a team of engineers at the Charles Babbage Institute in Minneapolis is working on …