Real-life drama and technology come together at the Computer History Museum as the highly anticipated Babbage Difference Engine No. 2 makes its U.S. debut.
As Victorian sagas go, the story of Charles Babbage, a 19th-century English mathematician, was beset by tragedy and failure. Babbage, the first to envision the programmable computer, came up with a design for a mechanical calculating engine that would generate error-free mathematical tables. These tables, with important uses in astronomy, engineering and banking, had previously been prepared laboriously by hand.
Despite generous government funding and decades of hard work, the irascible Babbage failed to complete his Difference Engine, leaving his plans to gather dust for more than 150 years. “Another age must be the judge,” he concluded, after abandoning his attempts to bring the designs to life in 1833. Adding to his misfortune, his father, wife and two sons all died in the same year, followed by his daughter shortly afterward. Babbage himself passed away in 1871 at the age of 81, a broken and bitter man.
Luckily, his story doesn’t end there. Thanks to renowned Babbage expert Doron Swade, the visionary’s dream has finally come true. Along with his team of engineers, Swade started building a Difference Engine in London, following the original designs. After former Microsoft CTO and tech millionaire Nathan Myhrvold saw the partially constructed engine, he agreed to fund its completion and then commissioned Swade to duplicate it for his personal collection.
The result is Difference Engine No. 2, a sight that no Victorian ever got to behold. The machine, which weighs 5 tons, contains 8,000 parts and measures 11 feet long by 7 feet high. It is cranked by hand, and automatically calculates and prints polynomial function tables to 31 decimal places.
The first engine, which took years to make, was completed in 2002 and proved that, had Babbage succeeded in building his it, his invention could have significantly changed the computing world as we know it. This duplicate machine, which will be on display for a year at the Computer History Museum before it is transported to Myhrvold’s private collection, is a testament to Babbage’s life and works, and, more importantly, a triumph of innovation. —Stephanie Soong
Schedule:
Runs through April 2009.
Wed-Fri & Sun, 12-4; Sat, 11-5.
Live demonstrations:
Weekdays, 2pm
Weekends, 1 & 2pm
Where:
Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View
Info:
(650) 810-1010
www.computerhistory.org
