Working Babbage engine on display

[Skrapwelder]

Went to see this today.



It was great to see and hear it as it worked. More pictures posted at my site.

http://www.arnicarealestate.com/Babbage_Engine.htm

Mike

[Vanvlak]

Thanks for the pics Skrapwelder - it looks grand. It may not run Vista, but it sure is a good-lookinag machine 

[Hammers]

Babbagemachine? Is that the artillery trajectory calculator?

[Operator5]

One of the first computers. Babbage never developed a working model of his correct?

I was always fascinated by the idea of it. Read Gibson's Difference Engine because of it.

[Westfalia Chris]

One of the first computers. Babbage never developed a working model of his correct?

I was always fascinated by the idea of it. Read Gibson's Difference Engine because of it.

That one above seems to be the Difference Engine No. 2, which actually worked. The projected "Analytical Engine" which was intended to be able to solve polynoms was never finished since he could not get the funds, and, frankly the tooling and production quality of the time was not up to the task posed by the incredible complexity and accuracy required.

As a "Difference Engine" fan myself, thumbs up for showing this lovely piece of Victoriana. Beats any of those nifty, if soulless VSF laptops by miles.

Thanks for the pics Skrapwelder - it looks grand. It may not run Vista, but it sure is a good-lookinag machine 

Well, since a great lot of computers cannot run Vista even though the manufacturers try to con us into thinking otherwise, I think it´s fair to say that Mr. Babbage was ahead of his time with that one in more than one aspect.

On this subject, I can recommend "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher", Babbages 1864 autobiography which I read back in the early millenium. Excellent read, both in English and the German translation.