Plate of the Engine in operation

The Analytical Web

This page is not stored as HTML. It is a chain of punched cards for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine of 1837, running on an emulated Mill and Store. Every character you read is the remainder of a fifty-digit division.

Raising steam Reading the card chain Run the engineer's manual

Card chain card 0

The Mill

Operationcard in force
+
Ingress Ifirst axis
0
Ingress IIsecond axis
0
Egressresult
0
Egress′remainder
0
Run-up leversign or overflow
clear

The Store 1,000 columns of 50 digits

V000divisor
0
V001zero
0
V002remainder
0

Data column, read right to left in sorts of three digits.

Regulator

Engine time
0 seconds
Cards read
0
Divisions
0
Characters printed
0
Remaining at this speed
…

Link to #true-speed to make a friend wait the full time. Babbage rated the Engine at sixty additions a minute and one fifty-digit division a minute. At rated speed this page takes some time.

Printing apparatus numerals as struck

The sheet, as the compositor sets each numeral in type: