Så den maskine jeg vil tale til jer om er det jeg kalder den største maskine der aldrig blev til noget. Det var en maskine der aldrig blev bygget, og alligevel, vil den blive bygget. Det var en maskine der blev bygget længe før nogen tænkte på computere.
So the machine I'm going to talk you about is what I call the greatest machine that never was. It was a machine that was never built, and yet, it will be built. It was a machine that was designed long before anyone thought about computers.
Hvis man ved noget som helst om computerens historie, ved man at der i 30'erne og 40'erne, blev bygget simple computere der startede den computer revolution vi har i dag, og man ville have ret, bortset fra at man ville have fat i det forkerte århundrede. Den første computer blev faktisk bygget i 1830'erne og 1840'erne, ikke 1930'erne og 1940'erne. Den blev bygget, og dele af den var prototyper, og de dele af der blev bygget er her i South Kensington.
If you know anything about the history of computers, you will know that in the '30s and the '40s, simple computers were created that started the computer revolution we have today, and you would be correct, except for you'd have the wrong century. The first computer was really designed in the 1830s and 1840s, not the 1930s and 1940s. It was designed, and parts of it were prototyped, and the bits of it that were built are here in South Kensington.
Den maskine blev bygget af denne fyr, Charles Babbage. Nuvel, jeg har en stor forkærlighed for Charles Babbage fordi hans hår altid er uredt ligesom dette på hvert eneste billede. (Latter) Han var en meget rig mand, og en slags, del af aristokratiet i England, og en lørdag aften i Marylebone, var man en del af intelligentsiaen i den periode, ville man være blevet inviteret til hans hus til et aftenselskab -- og han inviterede alle: konger, the Duke of Wellington, mange, mange kendte mennesker -- og han ville have vist en af sine mekaniske maskiner.
That machine was built by this guy, Charles Babbage. Now, I have a great affinity for Charles Babbage because his hair is always completely unkempt like this in every single picture. (Laughter) He was a very wealthy man, and a sort of, part of the aristocracy of Britain, and on a Saturday night in Marylebone, were you part of the intelligentsia of that period, you would have been invited round to his house for a soiree — and he invited everybody: kings, the Duke of Wellington, many, many famous people — and he would have shown you one of his mechanical machines.
Jeg savner virkelig den periode, I ved, hvor man ville gå til et aftenselskab og se en mekanisk computer blive demonstreret for en. (Latter) Men Babbage, Babbage selv blev født i slutningen af det 18 århundrede, og var en temmelig kendt matematiker. Han havde den samme stilling som Newton havde ved Cambridge, og for nyligt også var den af Stephen Hawking. Han er mindre kendt end begge to, fordi han fik denne ide at lave mekaniske beregnende ting og lavede aldrig nogen af dem.
I really miss that era, you know, where you could go around for a soiree and see a mechanical computer get demonstrated to you. (Laughter) But Babbage, Babbage himself was born at the end of the 18th century, and was a fairly famous mathematician. He held the post that Newton held at Cambridge, and that was recently held by Stephen Hawking. He's less well known than either of them because he got this idea to make mechanical computing devices and never made any of them.
Grunden til han aldrig lavede nogen af dem, han er en klassisk nørd. Hver gang han fik en god ide, tænkte han, "Det er genialt, jeg vil begynde at bygge den. Jeg bruger en formue på den. Jeg har en bedre ide. Jeg vil bygge denne. (Latter) Og jeg vil bygge denne." Han gjorde dette indtil Sir Robert Peel, den forhenværende premierminister, mere eller mindre sparkede ham ud af Downing Street 10, og sparkede ham ud, dengang, betød at sige, "Jeg ønsker dem en god dag, Hr." (Latter)
The reason he never made any of them, he's a classic nerd. Every time he had a good idea, he'd think, "That's brilliant, I'm going to start building that one. I'll spend a fortune on it. I've got a better idea. I'm going to work on this one. (Laughter) And I'm going to do this one." He did this until Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, basically kicked him out of Number 10 Downing Street, and kicking him out, in those days, that meant saying, "I bid you good day, sir." (Laughter)
Den ting han byggede var dette monstrum her, den analytiske maskine. Nuvel, bare for at give jer en ide om dette, dette er set ovenfra. Hver eneste af disse cirkler er et tandhjul, en stak tandhjul, og denne ting er lige så stor som et damp lokomotiv. Så mens jeg gennemgår dette foredrag, vil jeg bede jer om at forestille jer denne gigantiske maskine. Vi hørte disse vidunderlige lyde af hvordan denne ting kunne have lydt. Og jeg vil tage jer gennem arkitekturen af denne maskine -- det er derfor det er computer arkitektur -- og fortælle jer om denne maskine, der er en computer.
The thing he designed was this monstrosity here, the analytical engine. Now, just to give you an idea of this, this is a view from above. Every one of these circles is a cog, a stack of cogs, and this thing is as big as a steam locomotive. So as I go through this talk, I want you to imagine this gigantic machine. We heard those wonderful sounds of what this thing would have sounded like. And I'm going to take you through the architecture of the machine — that's why it's computer architecture — and tell you about this machine, which is a computer.
Så lad os tale om hukommelsen. Hukommelsen er meget lig den hukommelse en computer har i dag, bortset fra at det var lavet i metal, stakke og stakke og tandhjul, 30 tandhjul høj, forestille jeg en ting så høj med tandhjul, hundredvis og hundredvis af dem, og der er tal på dem. Det er en maskine. Alt bliver lavet i decimaler. Og han tænkte på at bruge binært. Problemet med at bruge binært er at maskinen ville have været så høj, at det ville have været latterligt. Som det er nu, er den enorm. Så han har hukommelse. Hukommelsen er den del herovre. I kan se det hele sådan her.
So let's talk about the memory. The memory is very like the memory of a computer today, except it was all made out of metal, stacks and stacks of cogs, 30 cogs high. Imagine a thing this high of cogs, hundreds and hundreds of them, and they've got numbers on them. It's a decimal machine. Everything's done in decimal. And he thought about using binary. The problem with using binary is that the machine would have been so tall, it would have been ridiculous. As it is, it's enormous. So he's got memory. The memory is this bit over here. You see it all like this.
Dette monstrum herovre er CPU'en, chippen, om man vil. Selvfølgelig, er den stor. Fuldstændig mekanisk. Hele denne maskine er mekanisk. Dette er et billede af en prototype for en del af CPU'en hvilket er i Science Museum.
This monstrosity over here is the CPU, the chip, if you like. Of course, it's this big. Completely mechanical. This whole machine is mechanical. This is a picture of a prototype for part of the CPU which is in the Science Museum.
CPU'en kunne lave de fire fundamentale funktioner i så addere, multiplicere, subtrahere og dividere -- hvilket allerede er noget af en bedrift i metal, men den kunne også noget som en computer gør og en lommeregner ikke gør: denne maskine kunne kigge på sin egen interne hukommelse og tage en beslutning. Den kunne lave "if then" for basic programmørerne, og det gjorde den fundamentalt til en computer. Den kunne beregne. Den kunne ikke kun regne. Den kunne gøre mere.
The CPU could do the four fundamental functions of arithmetic -- so addition, multiplication, subtraction, division -- which already is a bit of a feat in metal, but it could also do something that a computer does and a calculator doesn't: this machine could look at its own internal memory and make a decision. It could do the "if then" for basic programmers, and that fundamentally made it into a computer. It could compute. It couldn't just calculate. It could do more.
Hvis vi nu kigger på dette, og vi stopper op et øjeblik, og vi tænker på chips i dag, kan vi ikke kigge ind i en chip. Den er bare så lille. Men hvis man gjorde, ville man se noget meget, meget lig dette. Der er en utrolig kompleksitet i en CPU, og en utrolig regularitet i hukommelsen. Hvis man nogensinde har set et elektron mikroskop billede, ville man se dette. Det ser alt sammen ens ud, så er der denne del herovre der er utrolig kompliceret.
Now, if we look at this, and we stop for a minute, and we think about chips today, we can't look inside a silicon chip. It's just so tiny. Yet if you did, you would see something very, very similar to this. There's this incredible complexity in the CPU, and this incredible regularity in the memory. If you've ever seen an electron microscope picture, you'll see this. This all looks the same, then there's this bit over here which is incredibly complicated.
Alle disse tandhjuls mekanismer her, gør alt det en computer gør, men selvfølgelig skal man programmere denne ting, og selvfølgelig, brugte Babbage datidens teknologi og teknologien der ville dukke op i 50'erne, 60'erne og 70'erne, hvilket er hulkort. Denne ting herovre er en af tre hulkorts læsere, og dette program i Science Museum, ikke langt herfra, lavet af Charles Babbage, som sidder der -- man kan tage hen og se det -- ventende på at maskinen bliver bygget. Og der er ikke kun en af disse, der er mange af dem. Han klargjorde programmer i forventning om at det ville ske.
All this cog wheel mechanism here is doing is what a computer does, but of course you need to program this thing, and of course, Babbage used the technology of the day and the technology that would reappear in the '50s, '60s and '70s, which is punch cards. This thing over here is one of three punch card readers in here, and this is a program in the Science Museum, just not far from here, created by Charles Babbage, that is sitting there — you can go see it — waiting for the machine to be built. And there's not just one of these, there's many of them. He prepared programs anticipating this would happen.
Grunden til at de brugte hulkort, var at Jacquard, i Frankrig, havde skabt Jacquard væven, der vævede disse utrolige mønstre kontrolleret af hulkortene, så han genanvendte bare datidens teknologi, og ligesom alt andet han gjorde, brugte han teknologien fra hans tid, så 1830'erne, 1840'erne, 1850'erne, tandhjul, damp, mekaniske ting. Ironisk nok, født det samme år som Charles Babbage var Michael Faraday, der fuldstændig ville revolutionere alt med dynamoen, transformeren, alle den slags ting. Babbage, selvfølgelig, ville bruge disse afprøvede teknologier, så damp og den slags.
Now, the reason they used punch cards was that Jacquard, in France, had created the Jacquard loom, which was weaving these incredible patterns controlled by punch cards, so he was just repurposing the technology of the day, and like everything else he did, he's using the technology of his era, so 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, cogs, steam, mechanical devices. Ironically, born the same year as Charles Babbage was Michael Faraday, who would completely revolutionize everything with the dynamo, transformers, all these sorts of things. Babbage, of course, wanted to use proven technology, so steam and things.
Men han havde brug for tilbehør. Åbenlyst, har man en computer nu. Man har hulkort, en CPU og hukommelse. Man har brug for tilbehør som man selv kommer med. Det er ikke noget man bare har.
Now, he needed accessories. Obviously, you've got a computer now. You've got punch cards, a CPU and memory. You need accessories you're going to come with. You're not just going to have that,
Så, for det første, havde man lyd. Man havde en klokke, og hvis noget gik galt -- (Latter) -- eller maskinen havde brug for at operatøren kom forbi, var der en lille klokke der kunne ringe. (Latter) Og der er faktisk en instruktion på hulkortet der siger "Ring med klokken". Så man kan forestille sig dette "Ting!" I ved, man stopper et øjeblik, forestil jer alle disse lyde, denne ting, "Klik, klak klik klik klik", damp maskine, "Ding", ikke? (Latter)
So, first of all, you had sound. You had a bell, so if anything went wrong — (Laughter) — or the machine needed the attendant to come to it, there was a bell it could ring. (Laughter) And there's actually an instruction on the punch card which says "Ring the bell." So you can imagine this "Ting!" You know, just stop for a moment, imagine all those noises, this thing, "Click, clack click click click," steam engine, "Ding," right? (Laughter)
Man har også brug for en printer, selvfølgelig, og alle har brug for en printer. Dette er faktisk et billede af printe mekanismen for en anden af hans maskiner, kaldet the Difference Engine No. 2, som han aldrig byggede, men det gjorde the Science Museum i 80'erne og 90'erne. Det er komplet mekanisk, igen, en printer. Den printer kun numre, fordi han var besat af numre, men den printer på papir, og den kan endda lave orddeling, så hvis man kommer til enden af linjen, kommer den rundt på den måde.
You also need a printer, obviously, and everyone needs a printer. This is actually a picture of the printing mechanism for another machine of his, called the Difference Engine No. 2, which he never built, but which the Science Museum did build in the '80s and '90s. It's completely mechanical, again, a printer. It prints just numbers, because he was obsessed with numbers, but it does print onto paper, and it even does word wrapping, so if you get to the end of the line, it goes around like that.
Man har også brug for grafik, ikke? Jeg mener, hvis man skal gøre noget som helst med grafik, så han sagde, "Jamen, jeg har brug for en plotter. Jeg har et stort stykke papir og en fyldepen så jeg laver en plotter." Så han byggede også en plotter, og, I ved, på det tidspunkt, tror jeg han fik lavet en temmelig god maskine.
You also need graphics, right? I mean, if you're going to do anything with graphics, so he said, "Well, I need a plotter. I've got a big piece of paper and an ink pen and I'll make it plot." So he designed a plotter as well, and, you know, at that point, I think he got pretty much a pretty good machine.
Så kommer der denne kvinde, Ada Lovelace, forbi. Forestil jeg nu disse aftenselskaber, alle de store og vigtige kommer med. Denne dame er datteren af den gale, slemme, og farlige at kende Lord Byron, og hendes mor, værende lidt bekymret over at hun måske har arvet noget af Lord Byrons galskab og slemhed, tænkte, "Jeg kender løsningen: Matematik er løsningen. Vi lærer hende matematik. Det beroliger hende." (Latter) Fordi der har selvfølgelig, aldrig været en matematiker der er blevet gal, så, I ved, det bliver godt. (Latter) Alt bliver godt. Så hun har denne matematiske træning, and hun går til en af disse aftenselskaber med hendes mor, og Charles Babbage, I ved, finder denne maskine frem. The Duke of Wellington er der, I ved, finder maskinen frem, demonstrerer den selvfølgelig, og hun forstår det. Hun er den eneste person i hans livstid, faktisk, der sagde, "Jeg forstår hvad den gør, og jeg forstår fremtiden af denne maskine." Og vi skylder hende en enorm masse, fordi vi ved en masse om den maskine som Babbage ville bygge på grund af hende.
Along comes this woman, Ada Lovelace. Now, imagine these soirees, all these great and good comes along. This lady is the daughter of the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Lord Byron, and her mother, being a bit worried that she might have inherited some of Lord Byron's madness and badness, thought, "I know the solution: Mathematics is the solution. We'll teach her mathematics. That'll calm her down." (Laughter) Because of course, there's never been a mathematician that's gone crazy, so, you know, that'll be fine. (Laughter) Everything'll be fine. So she's got this mathematical training, and she goes to one of these soirees with her mother, and Charles Babbage, you know, gets out his machine. The Duke of Wellington is there, you know, get out the machine, obviously demonstrates it, and she gets it. She's the only person in his lifetime, really, who said, "I understand what this does, and I understand the future of this machine." And we owe to her an enormous amount because we know a lot about the machine that Babbage was intending to build because of her.
Nuvel, nogle mennesker kalder hende den første programmør. Det er faktisk fra en af -- det papir hun oversatte. Det er et program skrevet i en bestemt stil. Det er ikke, historisk, total nøjagtigt at hun er den første programmør, og faktisk, gjorde hun noget endnu mere utroligt. I stedet for bare at være en programmør, så hun noget som Babbage ikke så.
Now, some people call her the first programmer. This is actually from one of -- the paper that she translated. This is a program written in a particular style. It's not, historically, totally accurate that she's the first programmer, and actually, she did something more amazing. Rather than just being a programmer, she saw something that Babbage didn't.
Babbage var total besat med matematik. Han byggede en maskine til at lave matematik, og Lovelave sagde, "Man kunne lave mere end matematik på denne maskine". Og ligesom man gør, alle i dette lokale har en computer på sig, lige nu, fordi de har en telefon. Hvis man går ind i den telefon, er hver eneste ting i den telefon eller computer, eller en hvilken som helst anden databehandlings maskine er matematik. Det er i sidste ende alt sammen tal. Hvad enten det er video eller tekst eller tale, det er alt sammen numre, det er alt sammen, grundliggende, sker der matematiske funktioner, og Lovelace sagde, "Bare fordi man laver matematiske funktioner og symboler betyder det ikke at ting kan repræsentere andre ting i den virkelige verden, som musik". Dette var et kæmpe spring, fordi Babbage siger der, "Vi kunne beregne disse fantastiske funktioner og printe tabeller med numre og og tegne grafer," -- (Latter) -- og Lovelace er der og siger, "Hør engang, denne ting kunne endda udarbejde musik hvis man numerisk fortalte den en repræsentation af musik." Så dette er hvad jeg kalder Lovelaces spring. Når man siger hun er en programmør, hun lavede noget, men den rigtige ting er at sagde at fremtiden vil blive meget, meget mere end dette.
Babbage was totally obsessed with mathematics. He was building a machine to do mathematics, and Lovelace said, "You could do more than mathematics on this machine." And just as you do, everyone in this room already's got a computer on them right now, because they've got a phone. If you go into that phone, every single thing in that phone or computer or any other computing device is mathematics. It's all numbers at the bottom. Whether it's video or text or music or voice, it's all numbers, it's all, underlying it, mathematical functions happening, and Lovelace said, "Just because you're doing mathematical functions and symbols doesn't mean these things can't represent other things in the real world, such as music." This was a huge leap, because Babbage is there saying, "We could compute these amazing functions and print out tables of numbers and draw graphs," — (Laughter) — and Lovelace is there and she says, "Look, this thing could even compose music if you told it a representation of music numerically." So this is what I call Lovelace's Leap. When you say she's a programmer, she did do some, but the real thing is to have said the future is going to be much, much more than this.
Nu, hundrede år senere, kommer denne fyr, Alan Turing, og i 1936, og opfinder computeren om igen. Men, selvfølgelig, var Babbages maskine var komplet mekanisk. Turings maskine var komplet teoretisk. Begge disse fyre kom fra en matematisk baggrund, men Turing fortalte os noget meget vigtigt. Han fastlagde de matematiske grundpiller for computer videnskaben, og sagde, "Det er lige meget hvordan man laver en computer." Det er lige meget om ens computer er mekanisk, ligesom Babbages var, eller elektronisk, ligesom computere er i dag, eller måske i fremtiden, celler, eller, igen, mekaniske igen, når vi begynder med nanoteknologi. Vi kunne gå tilbage til Babbages maskine og bare lave den lille. Alle disse ting er computere. Der er med andre ord en beregnende kerne. Dette er kaldet Church-Turing tesen.
Now, a hundred years later, this guy comes along, Alan Turing, and in 1936, and invents the computer all over again. Now, of course, Babbage's machine was entirely mechanical. Turing's machine was entirely theoretical. Both of these guys were coming from a mathematical perspective, but Turing told us something very important. He laid down the mathematical foundations for computer science, and said, "It doesn't matter how you make a computer." It doesn't matter if your computer's mechanical, like Babbage's was, or electronic, like computers are today, or perhaps in the future, cells, or, again, mechanical again, once we get into nanotechnology. We could go back to Babbage's machine and just make it tiny. All those things are computers. There is in a sense a computing essence. This is called the Church–Turing thesis.
Og så pludselig, får man dette link hvor man siger denne ting Babbage byggede faktisk var en computer. Faktisk, var den i stand til at gøre alt vi gør i dag med computere, bare virkelig langsomt. (Latter) For at give jer en ide om hvor langsomt, havde den cirka 1k hukommelse. Den brugte hulkort, som blev stukket ind, og den kørte omkring 10.000 gange langsommere end den første ZX81. Den havde en RAM pakke. Man kunne sætte en masse ekstra hukommelse på, hvis man ville.
And so suddenly, you get this link where you say this thing Babbage had built really was a computer. In fact, it was capable of doing everything we do today with computers, only really slowly. (Laughter) To give you an idea of how slowly, it had about 1k of memory. It used punch cards, which were being fed in, and it ran about 10,000 times slower the first ZX81. It did have a RAM pack. You could add on a lot of extra memory if you wanted to.
(Latter) Så, hvor får det os hen i dag? Så her er planerne. Ovre i Swindon, the Science Museum arkiverne, der er hundredvis af planer og tusindvis af sider med noter, skrevet af Charles Babbage omkring denne analytiske maskine. En af disse, er et sæt planer som vi kalder Plan 28, og det er også navnet på en velgørende organisation som jeg startede med Doron Swade, der var IT kuratoren ved the Science Museum, og også personen der drev projektet til at bygge en difference maskine, og vores plan er at bygge den. Her i South Kensington, vil vi bygge den analytiske maskine.
(Laughter) So, where does that bring us today? So there are plans. Over in Swindon, the Science Museum archives, there are hundreds of plans and thousands of pages of notes written by Charles Babbage about this analytical engine. One of those is a set of plans that we call Plan 28, and that is also the name of a charity that I started with Doron Swade, who was the curator of computing at the Science Museum, and also the person who drove the project to build a difference engine, and our plan is to build it. Here in South Kensington, we will build the analytical engine.
Projektet består af nogle forskellige dele. Et af dem var at scanne Babbages arkiv. Det er sket. Det andet er nu at studere alle disse planer for at afgøre hvad vi skal bygge. Den tredje del er en computer simulation af den maskine, og den sidste del er fysisk at bygge den ved the Science Museum.
The project has a number of parts to it. One was the scanning of Babbage's archive. That's been done. The second is now the study of all of those plans to determine what to build. The third part is a computer simulation of that machine, and the last part is to physically build it at the Science Museum.
Når den er bygget, vil man endelig forstå hvordan en computer virker, fordi i stedet for at have en lillebitte chip foran sig, skal man kigge på denne enorme ting og sige, "Ah, jeg kan se hukommelsen arbejde, jeg kan se CPU'en arbejde jeg kan høre den arbejde. Jeg lugter sikkert den arbejder." (Latter) Men i mellem det kommer vi til at lave en simulation.
When it's built, you'll finally be able to understand how a computer works, because rather than having a tiny chip in front of you, you've got to look at this humongous thing and say, "Ah, I see the memory operating, I see the CPU operating, I hear it operating. I probably smell it operating." (Laughter) But in between that we're going to do a simulation.
Babbage skrev selv, han sagde, så snart den analytiske maskine eksisterer, vil den helt sikkert guide den fremtidige kurs for videnskab. Selvfølgelig, byggede han den aldrig, fordi han altid fiflede med nye planer, men da den blev bygget, selvfølgelig, i 1940'erne, ændrede den alt.
Babbage himself wrote, he said, as soon as the analytical engine exists, it will surely guide the future course of science. Of course, he never built it, because he was always fiddling with new plans, but when it did get built, of course, in the 1940s, everything changed.
Nu vil jeg bare give jer en lille forsmag på hvordan den ser ud i bevægelse, med en video der viser bare en del af CPU mekanismen der arbejder. Så dette er kun tre sæt tandhjul, og den vil addere. Dette er den adderende mekanisme i aktion, så man forestiller sig denne enorme maskine.
Now, I'll just give you a little taste of what it looks like in motion with a video which shows just one part of the CPU mechanism working. So this is just three sets of cogs, and it's going to add. This is the adding mechanism in action, so you imagine this gigantic machine.
Så, giv mig fem år. Inden 2030'erne sker, har vi den.
So, give me five years. Before the 2030s happen, we'll have it.
Mange tak. (Bifald)
Thank you very much. (Applause)