This article was taken from the April 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

John Graham-Cumming is rebooting Babbage's Analytical Engine -- with its 1.7kB of memory.

Name: John Graham-Cumming


Occupation: Programmer and 3D modeller

Location: London

Why he's important: He's building a missing part in the history of the PC


With more than 40,000 moving parts and at nearly five metres long, Charles Babbage's steam-powered Analytical Engine is regarded as one of the earliest examples of a programmable computer. Yet remarkably, since the British mathematician first described it in 1837, the machine has never been fully built -- the only existing part is its printing mechanism, pictured above.

John Graham-Cumming (pictured), London-based programmer, author of The Geek Atlas and head of tech for computer-modelling company Causata, is on a mission to complete Babbage's mathematical masterpiece. He has already raised more than £60,000 in pledges towards the prototype's estimated £400,000 costs and is preparing to start construction. But, even after digitising Babbage's extensive plans and using 3D-modelling software, he estimates that it will still take many years to complete the machine.

Graham-Cumming, 43, will spend the first year sifting more than 7,000 pages of Babbage's notes and hundreds of large-scale drawings, the most complete and detailed of which is "Plan 28", from which the project takes its name. His big computation? That it can be built by the 150th anniversary of Babbage's death in 2021.