Plan 28 is an ongoing effort to do this.
However, it is hard. Nobody is actually sure how to build it.
Winter 2015:
There has been significant archive activity. The major historical source is the Babbage technical archive held by the Science Museum. The Science Museum digitised the archive in 2012 is now preparing to provide open access to the archive. The Analytical Engine project team has been the main user of the digitised archive under special licence. In the course of the project mismatches have been identified between the digitised material and the existing printed index compiled by the late Allan Bromley and published by the Science Museum in 1991. Referencing anomalies, identification of material omitted from digitisation exercise and other structural issues have become evident. Descriptions of these have been compiled and we are working with Science Museum archivists to resolve and correct these ahead of open access release. The work is detailed and, given the volume of material, substantial. Eye-strain is an ongoing hazard.
Spring 2016:
We have been pecking away at Babbage’s original design drawings for some while now and have found with regret that we are unable to reverse engineer a coherent and consistent understanding of the Analytical Engine from the mechanical drawings alone. There are some 300 drawings and some 2200 Notations – descriptions of the mechanisms using Babbage’s language of signs and symbols. There were three phases of design - early, middle, and late.There is overlap between these, there are ad hoc upgrades, and only fragmentary explanation, where there is explanation at all.
Autumn 2016:
Tim Robinson in the US has been trawling through the entire technical archive and compiling a searchable cross-referenced data base for all surviving technical material. In parallel with this I am conducting a fast-track survey of some twenty manuscript volumes of Babbage’s notebooks focussing on material on his notational language (the Mechanical Notation) that he used to describe his machines – this with a view to reading the notational description of the AE designs using the decoded Notation as an interpretative tool to achieve a deeper understanding of the designs. The data-base and trawling exercise is what has primarily occupied us over the last four months.
March 2018:
The Cambridge manuscript belongs to Babbage’s later period (1850s and early 1860s) when he returned to refine and develop his earlier work. The most substantial single section consists of some 65 manuscript pages the transcription of which is now complete. Tim Robinson has vetted the transcriptions and incorporated them into the database. Preliminary review of this new material suggests that while cryptic in parts it is more coherent than previously thought and contains some potentially dramatic simplifications of implementation. This material will be the focus of close study in due course.
Autumn 2018:
The end is in sight creating the cross-referenced database for the set of some 20 Scribbling Books, the manuscript notebooks in which Babbage recorded his workings and thoughts on his engine designs. Tim Robinson, who has been compiling the database is up to the last year of Babbage’s life (1871) and is within striking distance of completion. The process has taken coming up for three years.
March 2019:
The Notations for Difference Engine 1, dating from 1834, thought to exist, had never come to light. These have now been found and represent a crucial piece in the puzzle of the developmental trajectory of the symbolic language Babbage developed as a design aid, to describe and specify his engine, and used extensively in the development of the Analytical Engine.
Equally significant is the discovery of what is thought to be the legendary Plan 28a, part of the most advanced design for the Analytical Engine. There have been references to Plan 28 and Plan 28a designs peppered through the late manuscripts and some design drawings, but the existence of this plan has never been confirmed.
Autumn 2019
Logging this last cache of material is now complete and it appears that only about a third of the original material survives.
With the archive review essentially complete, a process that took over three years, Tim has shifted attention to developing a simulation environment to describe, explore, and verify the mechanical designs. So far this involves ‘logical’ simulation which features aspects of Babbage’s Mechanical Notation, the language of signs and symbols he devised to describe the machines and as a design aid, not unlike a later Hardware Description Language (HDL).
January 2021
With the first-pass inspection of the manuscript archive complete, attention has turned to analysis and interpretation, and organising the findings to aid navigation. Babbage shed versions of the design as it developed in the form of ‘Plans’ – large ‘systems drawings’ which serve as developmental staging posts – the main ones of which number Plan 1 through to Plan 28. The overall approach to analysing the accumulated data is that of a timeline that groups all material, from wherever in the archive (drawings, Notebooks, Notations), to each of the landmark Plans.
Progress was slowed in by climate crises in California not to mention political and pandemic disruption. The initial findings are a long-awaited reward after some four years examining primary sources.
Spring 2021
Excavating further the hardly-known Plan 30 (there is a Plan 28a but seemingly no Plan 29) proved irresistible both for inherent interest and for completeness. Babbage restarted work on the AE designs in June 1857 after a break of almost a decade and referred to the machine as ‘Analytical Engine 30’. Tim reports that the hardware changes introduced for Plan 30 are ‘dramatic’. One remarkable feature is the extension of the Store to 1000 registers, and most intriguingly various methods of mechanically addressing the store contents. The broad-stroke writing has been paused temporarily while this rich seam is explored. It is not expected to take long and we look forward do the resumption of the interpretative account.
Winter 2021:
The project has reached a long-awaited defining point. Tim Robinson has completed the first draft of the most comprehensive description yet of the Analytical Engine designs. We have for the first time both an aerial view that integrates partial and seemingly unrelated developments, as well as the most detailed analysis yet of the specifics of implementation.
This analysis has been a prerequisite for the build. Babbage left no design for a complete Engine and the rationale for the ad hoc improvements made over thirty-eight years has not, till now, been fully investigated nor understood. We have lacked the necessary understanding to inform a meaningful build i.e. which signature features of which design should be combined to create a single representative machine.
