The idea of computers has been around for over a century. As with most new inventions, the computer began as a dream in the mind of Charles Babbage. His idea involved a machine called the Defference Engine. This machine was basically a large scale calculator. The machine used pre-prepared numerical tables and a mathematical technique referred to as the method of difference. This process of numerical manipulation was slow and mechanical. Babbage created a prototype of his dream as early as 1822. Babbage's dreams of a computer became a reality in 1853, due to two brothers, Georg and Edvard Scheutz. They based their design on Babbage's difference machine with a slight twist to the original. Their machine was composed of long shafts and disks. These disks are not the floppy disks we are acustomed to now. The disks of Scheutz machine contained ten teeth that when cranked could produce a mathmatical answer. "Ascientist could set the disks with known figures, odd and even, turn a crank, and by reading down on each shaft, find the result of a calculation" (Park 20). The twist came when the machine was capable of printing the results. Babbage could be called the instigator of the technical revolution of the twentieth century.

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