The Babbage Issue

Description

How is it possible that machines can be used to make calculations?
It seems like a strange question, in an era in which computers are everywhere and take every form: from the classic desktop, now almost a ‘vintage’ item, to the laptop, to the modern tablet.
The road from the manual technology of counting one’s own fingers to the ‘digital’ technology of the universal smartphone, via the abacus and mechanical calculators, is long and winding, and has taken the greatest energy from the greatest innovators.
Like the protagonist of Il segreto di Babbage (Babbage’s secret), by Alfredo Castelli and Gabriele Peddes, in collaboration with The Museum of Computing Machinery in Pisa. With their help, we will discover how a dream was born and came true: to free humankind from tedious, heavy and repetitive tasks by freeing their creative energies.