The Annotated Today in Alternate History

1930: The Dede

A year before his death, Thomas Edison finally saw his dream fulfilled; the Desktop Eddie, (popularly known as the Dede), a difference engine that was the size of a desk and only weighed 400 pounds. The Dede became the first difference engine small and cheap enough for sale to the general public, and so the Dede opened the door to an information revolution in the 30s.

In reality, the first computer the size of a desk probably was the 1939 ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). It weighed 700 pounds, was packed with 300 vacuum tubes and a mile of wire and ould do about one operation every 15 seconds.

By the late 1960s, the 1965 IBM 1130 was a best-selling computer the size of a desk. It typically had a CPU with 8Kwords or 16Kwords of 3.2-microsecond (280kHz) core memory, a single disk storage device, a 1442 card read-punch unit, and an 1132 line printer.

1887: The Pascal Difference Engine

The Eddie got its first competitor, in the form of the French Pascal Difference Engine. The PDE was a full ton lighter than the Eddie, a valuable selling point, as many buildings had to be reinforced before an Eddie could be placed in them. This hidden cost of owning an Eddie had made sales slower than they might have been, and spurred Edison to drive his engineers to work on miniaturizing the Eddie.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) invented the Arithmetic Machine in 1620. It could perform additions (and subtractions, after a fashion) with a number of rotary dials and worked much like an odometer in a car.

In reality, the first real French computer was the 1952 Calculateur Universel Binaire de l'Armement (CUBA), built by the Société d’Electronique et d'Automatisme.

1899: The Mandarin

Thomas Edison announced the new Eddie for a new century, the Mandarin. The 20th century line of Eddies was named after orange varieties, and proved to be very popular; the cost was down to that of a new car, and they were the size of a large car. Edison vowed that with the Orange line of Eddies, by the end of the next century, an Eddie would be the size of a desk. Skeptics abounded.

The first computer the size of a desk probably was the 1939 ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). It weighed 700 pounds, was packed with 300 vacuum tubes and a mile of wire. Could do about one operation every 15 seconds.

By the late 1960s, the 1965 IBM 1130 was a best-selling computer the size of a desk. It typically had a CPU with 8Kwords or 16Kwords of 3.2-microsecond (280kHz) core memory, a single disk storage device, a 1442 card read-punch unit, and an 1132 line printer.

1872: The Eddies

On the 50th anniversary of Charles Babbage's difference engine, Thomas Edison unveiled his electric-powered version of the machine. The Edison EDE's, (Eddies, as they were known popularly), initially sold only to the US, British and French governments, became so useful that within a decade, most governments and large businesses were using them.

Charles Babbage (1791-1871) [Biography] proposed building the Difference Engine, a machine to tabulate polynomials. The machine was never finished: the gears at the heart of the machine could at the time not be produced to the necessary standard, and besides, Babbage kept changing his mind about the plans—which probably led to conflicts with the mechanics. Construction was halted in 1833.

By then Babbage had a more ambitious machine in mind: the Analytical Engine. Where the Difference Engine was limited to polynomial equations, the Analytical engine was conceived as a true programmable computer. It too was never built by Babbage.

The first fully working Difference Engine was built in 1855 by the Swedes Georg and Edvard Schuetz.

For another timeline where Edison builds an electrical calculator, see Calculateur Edison.

In reality, Edison spent May 1872 working on, amongst others, Rheotomes or Circuit-Directors, Automatic Telegraph Instruments, Electro-Magnetic Adjusters, Electro-Magnets and Printing-Telegraph Instruments.