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Babbage's Calculationg engine in contemporary 1855 fiction.
This is a scan from an original 1855 installment of Charles Dickens's _Little Dorrit. It is a bit dark as this cut was tinted with a black toned overwash.
This is the full illustration showing what looks like the factory where Babbege's Difference engine was constructed. The shadows in the center back, (hard to see in the scan) show the characteristic L shaped tower on the left of DE 1. The printing unit would be in the center mid foreground.
Note that the machine was said to be 70 percent completed when the funding was cut. Eventually the materials were returned to Babbage and his heirs. Most of the parts (then the most precice ever manufactured) were melted down by Babbage's son Henry. What was not melted were donated to museums or taken with Henry when he emigrated to Australia after his father's death.
Henry is an interesting person in his own right, a member of the ordinance survey he was amoung the first to map India and Australia. He also worked to complete his fathers efforts making a working four function calculator, based on principles of the Analytical engine arguably proving his father correct. Alas, most historians consider this a dead end as others made more practical adding machines in the early 20th century.
Difference engine copies, are now In the London Science museum, and Private collections and look much like what is shown in this contemporary engraving of 1855.
This is the full illustration showing what looks like the factory where Babbege's Difference engine was constructed. The shadows in the center back, (hard to see in the scan) show the characteristic L shaped tower on the left of DE 1. The printing unit would be in the center mid foreground.
Note that the machine was said to be 70 percent completed when the funding was cut. Eventually the materials were returned to Babbage and his heirs. Most of the parts (then the most precice ever manufactured) were melted down by Babbage's son Henry. What was not melted were donated to museums or taken with Henry when he emigrated to Australia after his father's death.
Henry is an interesting person in his own right, a member of the ordinance survey he was amoung the first to map India and Australia. He also worked to complete his fathers efforts making a working four function calculator, based on principles of the Analytical engine arguably proving his father correct. Alas, most historians consider this a dead end as others made more practical adding machines in the early 20th century.
Difference engine copies, are now In the London Science museum, and Private collections and look much like what is shown in this contemporary engraving of 1855.
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