What is the difference between the difference engine and the Analytical Engine?

The Difference Engine, designed by Charles Babbage in the 1820s, was a mechanical calculator intended for producing mathematical tables through finite differences. In contrast, the Analytical Engine, conceived later in the 1830s, was a more advanced design that featured a general-purpose computing architecture, including an arithmetic logic unit, control flow through conditional branching, and memory. While the Difference Engine was specific to a single task, the Analytical Engine was envisioned as a programmable machine capable of performing any calculation. This distinction marks the Analytical Engine as a precursor to modern computers.