A California difference engine

[scarlettina]

A difference engine comes to Silicon Valley--CNET

"MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--'Excuse me, Richard, we have a very large parcel.'

With those words, spoken by John Shulver of London's Science Museum, a day of supreme geekery unfolded at the Computer History Museum here.

To be precise, the package in question was the delivery and installation of a difference engine, a brand new model of a 19th-century-era machine designed--but never actually built--by Charles Babbage. It was designed to be a mechanical calculator which can determine polynomial functions."

The piece includes lots of pictures. Go feast thine eyes, my fellow tech geeks. It is a sight to behold.

Comments

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

Babbage was such a nut. A brilliant but eccentric nut.

[inevitableguy.livejournal.com]

I'd like to get one of those for my living room.

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

It makes me long for the old old tech days, when troubleshooting a hardware problem meant re-cutting your wax cast to adjust the spacing between the cog teeth, and hoping you replaced the right wheel. Now that takes 1337 $ki1z. Those techs had brass balls.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

Road trip! (Or more likely, train or flight.) Now I know what I want to do when SIFF is finished.