Charles Babbage: the brain that invented the computer

Though Silicon Valley may be the heart of the commercialisation of all things digital, it is the British who can proudly boast having invented the computer. Indeed, so proud are the British of the work done by eccentric British mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, that the Science Museum in London has subsequently built the machines he conceived and the Royal College of Surgeons has preserved his brain - the brain that invented the computer. Babbage proposed the first computer, a machine he called "the difference engine", in 1822 - it was the size of a house, could store a program, was powered by steam and could even print results.

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