The
Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical
general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer
Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's
difference engine, a design for a mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine incorporated an
arithmetic logic unit,
control flow in the form of
conditional branching and loops, and integrated
memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as
Turing-complete. In other words, the logical structure of the Analytical Engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era.