Swade is originally from
South Africa. He has studied
electronics engineering,
history,
machine intelligence,
philosophy of science and
physics at a number of universities including the
University of Cape Town,
University of Cambridge, and
University College London (UCL). and the
Computer History Museum in
Silicon Valley,
California, United States, where he worked on an exhibit on
relational databases. At the Science Museum, he curated the computing and electronics collections and rose to be Assistant Director and Head of Collections. His major project at the museum was to organise the construction of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, in collaboration with Dr
Allan Bromley who studied Babbage's original drawings at the Science Museum. In 1989, Swade was a co-founder of the
Computer Conservation Society, a specialist group of the
British Computer Society (BCS), with regular meetings at the Science Museum. He is a Fellow of the BCS and a
Chartered Engineer. Swade is a visiting professor in the history of computing at the
University of Portsmouth, UK. Swade was awarded an MBE for services to the history of computing in the UK
New Year Honours 2009 list. Since 2010, Swade has been involved with the Plan 28 project to understand whether Babbage's
Analytical Engine was a feasible computer based on Babbage's work, and to build a simulation. ==Bibliography==