The following is an excerpt of a rough draft of the soon-to-be-published book, A Brief History of Computing: The GNU Story.
In the late 1920’s electrical engineer, inventor, and government administrator Vannevar Bush began work on what would become the Rockefeller Differential Analyser. An analog computer that was an advanced version of Babbage’s “engines” that, because of advances in technology, it was now possible to build. The machine was designed to solve differential equations by integration. Bush’s first fully operational analyser was completed in 1931. He would produce a working version of the Rockefeller in 1942.