Comments on: Charles Babbage's masterpiece difference engine comes to Silicon Valley

The machine, only the second machine of its kind in existence, is delivered in advance of an exhibition that will open May 10.

[Randys2cents]

Work of Art

This is an amazing work of art. Nice to see real craftsmanship is
still alive.

[WriteRight]

Babbage's Dream

It wasn't so much that Babbage ran out of money - the British government was footing the bill - but the fact that the design of his machine was simply beyond the ability of Victorian technology. Babbage had at the then astronomical cost of 50 000 pounds managed to build just half of the machine only to find that a slight stiffness of each of the multitude of cams added up to enormous friction that rendered the machine useless. Present day mechanical engineering remedies such problems using off the shelf standard ball bearings. In Babbage's times that just wasn't an option seeing that nearly every mechanical part, such as ball bearings, had to be hand crafted from scratch. It was after realising this did the government pull the breaks and write of its losses. Also it must have been a very stressful time for Babbage who suffered a number of what we would now call mental breakdowns.

[mopalia]

Babbage's dream

Actually, the Difference Engine #2, version 1, was built in 1991 at the Science Museum in London as proof of concept, and it was entirely constructed by hand, using precisely the tools and techniques available to Babbage. Many if the parts demanded precision not common at the time, and Clement, Babbage's machinist (reckoned to be the finest in England), developed tools to execute the design. One of Clement's workers, a fellow named Whitworth, came up with the world's first standardized screw thread. This machine at Mountain View was built the same way, and Richard, as mentioned in the article, was the engineer who built it. The only concession to the heavy load was a 4 to 1 gearing of the wheel which means that there are now four easier turns per cycle rather than the one turn Babbage designed.
Babbage's "breakdowns" may be more related to the tragic deaths of his wife and children, although the conflict with the government certainly didn't help. Doron Swade's "The Clockwork Brain" is about to be reprinted; reading that should clear up a lot of the popular mis-information that is about.