Charles Babbage was born December 26th 1791 and died on October 18th 1871. He attended Trinity College in 1811 and taught at the university. He spent much of his life studying and calculating machinery. In 1824 he won the Gold Medal of Royal Astronomical Society. According to the University of Minnesota, "In 1821 Babbage invented the Difference Engine to compile mathematical tables. On completing it in 1832, he conceived the idea of a better machine that could perform not just one mathematical task but any kind of calculation. This was the Analytical Engine (1856), which was intended as a general symbol manipulator, and had some of the characteristics of today's computers."