Even before electronics, computers crashed: The struggle to create a computer consumed Charles Babbage's life.(Features)(Books) From: The Christian Science Monitor | Date: September 6, 2001 | COPYRIGHT 2001 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Byline: James Norton

In the 19th century, computers walked the streets of England. Generations before the dawn of Windows, "computers" were people, employed to calculate and double-check endless tables of simple computations used by navigators, astronomers, and engineers.

The tedium of the work and the fallibility of the computers often resulted in tables teeming with errors. Errata sheets were issued for flawed tables, but they often contained errors of ...

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