As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. This is a replica of the portion of a ...

Englishman Charles Babbage (1791–1871), an eccentric, ingenious mathematician, decided that existing tables of computations included far too many errors: the day's textbooks came with errata sheets ...

AT a meeting of the Newcomen Society held at the Science Museum on December 13, Dr. L. H. D. Buxton read a paper on Charles Babbage and his difference engine, during which he gave a sketch of the ...

An early calculator designed by Charles Babbage and subsidized by the British government. Employing wheels and rods, which others had experimented with earlier, the project was started in 1821 but ...

*Here’s an Italian biography of Luigi Federico Menebrea, a Turinese soldier, scholar and politician. He met Charles Babbage as a military student, and wrote the first article ever written about ...

Charles Babbage is widely recognized as a pioneer of the programable computer due to his ingenious designs for steam-driven calculating machines in the 19th century. But Babbage drew inspiration from ...

These objects, held in London's Science Museum, have some significant purpose — or curiosity value — in the history of physics. Can you guess what they are? This was the first fully automated ...