Photos: The Victorian engine that could

Built from more than 8,000 parts, the Difference Engine weighs more than 5 tons, measures 11 feet across and stands 7 feet tall.

To remove room for human error in basic mathematical computations, Babbage designed the Engine to calculate tables of polynomial functions to 31 decimals points. The special part of his design is that it works through addition and not multiplication.

Photo by Computer History Museum

Caption by Kara Tsuboi