siliconmonkey
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2
Another shot from our trip to the Computer History Museum. This is a shot, along with a larger inset, of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2. The top of the shot is only a section of the actual machine. The sheer size and intricacy of it all is stunning in person.
From the entry for difference engine on Wikipedia;
The Difference Engine was an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.
Marcin also has a few nice photos of the machine.
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2
Another shot from our trip to the Computer History Museum. This is a shot, along with a larger inset, of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2. The top of the shot is only a section of the actual machine. The sheer size and intricacy of it all is stunning in person.
From the entry for difference engine on Wikipedia;
The Difference Engine was an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.
Marcin also has a few nice photos of the machine.