As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

Charles Babbage was born on 26 December 1791, probably in London, the son of a banker. He was often unwell as a child and was educated mainly at home. By the time he went to Cambridge University in ...

While the Dartmouth workshop in 1956 is the official birthplace of AI, it wasn’t the first time that people had thought about building thinking machines. However, without access to computers, there ...