When was the difference engine built

In he had one page of tables published in 13 different inks on different colors of paper. More important, he endlessly sought ways to take the killing drudgery out of factory work. Metering devices, for example, would automatically do the mindless counting of some repeated action in a mill. He invented a time clock for punching in; suspicious workers called it the "tell-tale.

He tried to get the government to change the traditional values of pounds, shillings and pence for a decimal system. He got about as far as American scientists have today after years of pleading in vain to introduce the metric system. Still, the British adopted his proposed two-shilling piece, or florin, making ten florins equal to a pound sterling. Babbage never fully finished the expanded Difference Engine, which he began calling the "Analytical Engine," but parts of the original ran smoothly in displays and kept bringing him more attention.

Babbage," said one woman after listening to his explanation of it, "there is only one thing that I want to know. If you put the question in wrong, will the answer come out right? As the saying goes, "Garbage in, garbage out. Babbage was a splendid host. The Duke of Wellington came to call. So did Charles Dickens. Babbage talked shop with Sir Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the Wheatstone bridge for measuring electrical resistance; with Joseph Whitworth, whose rifle cannon with hexagonal bores were bought by the Confederate States of America and used with deadly accuracy on unfortunate Union troops; with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the giant iron ship Great Eastern Smithsonian , November Above all, there was Augusta Ada Byron, daughter of the poet.

She was a brilliant and beautiful woman, whom Byron had named "Augusta" after his half-sister, who was also his mistress. Though Augusta Ada was her daughter, Lady Byron never forgave the girl for having the same name as the woman she despised. Ada was skilled at mathematics and one of the few people able to understand and explain what Babbage's inventions were all about. It was a chaste affair — Ada was married to the Earl of Lovelace.

But she devoted years to helping Babbage, writing explanations of his achievements and dreams, admiring him with professional as well as filial devotion. She wrote up some of his notes so well that he wanted to publish them under her byline. She declined.

Yet when he rewrote a bit of her copy — just changing a word or two — she made it clear that no one ever rewrites a Byron. House of Commons. Sessional Papers [], p. By this time Babbage had begun to turn his attention to the Analytical Engine , a far more complex and powerful calculating machine whose design would occupy Babbage for most of the rest of his scientific career. Remarkably the printing feature of Babbage's Difference Engine No. In January when I was reading what Hansard had to say about the highly advanced typesetting and printing inventions of William Church , about which Hansard was incredulous, I came across these remarks of Hansard on p.

Babbage is, however, much more within the scope of probability than that of Dr. He does not go to the casting-type process— his authorship and composing go no further than the ten figures— and his object is, to effect accuracy where it is of great consequence, so that it may, perhaps be of general benefit. He had his letter published as a pamphlet, and sent it to people he deemed influential: A Letter to Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. Almost all of the parts were created using modern lathes and milling machines, but with the same degree of precision available to 19th-century engineers.

The only exception: The numerical wheels were made on a modern CNC machine, to save time. Horton began work on the engine in , assisting Reginald Crick in building the printing system. Left: Horton watches as the Difference Engine comes through the door and into the lobby of the Computer History Museum.

The British government funded his early work, hoping that the engine would help compute more-accurate trigonometric tables and other calculations needed for navigation, science and engineering.

But Babbage, while brilliant, was not so good at keeping his projects on track, said Leonard Shustek, chairman of the board for the Computer History Museum. It, too, was never built.