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- working, or not?

Since Babbage never actually completed the Analytical Engine. He didn't finish the Difference Engine either, but The Science Museum in London, did.

...who made the first computer and printer!!!

The leading proposals are above-ground storage (perhaps surprisingly, favoured by Green groups as it allows for easiest monitoring, though the politicians fret about terrorist attacks), dumping in stable rock (a la Yucca Mountain), or storing in stable rock as previously, but maintaining monitoring until everyone's confident it's OK (Green groups worry that these will be too easy to convert to unmonitored dumps once established).

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The leading proposals are above-ground storage (perhaps surprisingly, favoured by Green groups as it allows for easiest monitoring, though the politicians fret about terrorist attacks), dumping in stable rock (a la Yucca Mountain), or storing in stable rock as previously, but maintaining monitoring until everyone's confident it's OK (Green groups worry that these will be too easy to convert to unmonitored dumps once established).

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Actually, the Difference Engine #2 was built by the Science Museum in the UK and completed in 1991 to mark the bicentennial of Babbage's birth.

It is interesting to note that while Babbage had tried to realize the difference engine #1 and the analytical engine in metal, he had not ever tried to have the difference engine #2 built.

From the link: "Modern techniques were used in the manufacture of repeat parts but care was taken to restrict limits of precision to those achievable by Babbage."

For a brief primer, read this article.

Far from being the backward place you believe it to be Manchester was one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution; one end of one of the earliest Railway systems in the world (the Liverpool to Manchester for which speed trials were held where Stephenson's Rocket won); and the birthplace of digital stored program computers.

>> In fact, the reason you can't make computers out of Descartes' hydraulics is the same reason Babbage failed to make one out of gears

Actually the mechanism of Babbage's machine had nothing to do with why he failed to build it. One of them was in fact built in 1991 using 19th-century techniques.

Just a little tangent to brighten your day!

Right now in London the British Science Museum is has a LOTR exhibit full of all the stuff from the movies. Trust me, this could be a permanent show, and people would keep coming for many, many years. But it's only here until Jan. After that, I hear it's moving to Boston for a few months.

they could set up a traveling exhibit

Like this?

The article makes me think of that (probably false) story about the U.S. patent director in 1899 saying that the U.S. patent office should be closed because 'everything that can be invented already has been'.

Anyway, I can't wait for the new smaller gears to come out on the new Babbage Analytical Engine. I have my wrenches and spanners out already waiting to install them on my home unit. :-/

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

If you're near the south of the UK, it's also being shown at the Science Museum in London on a regular basis. With all of the other material there, it's a fantastic place to take a day trip to.

Who finds it a little strange that a science and history museum is having an exhibition dedicated to a work of fiction ?

It's not the first time they've done something like this...they did a James Bond exhibition earlier.

Y'see, many of the museums in the UK no longer charge admission for regular exhibits (though many have donation boxes at the entrances)...special exhibits like this are a way to both get more people to visit and to make some extra money.

If you are visiting London's Science Museum don't forget to visit the Charles Babbage exhibit. You'll never look at a computer in quite the same way again.

Nope, Dolly was put down when her viral infection got too bad. This type of infection is not unusual to find in sheep that live indoors, as Dolly did.

True, dolly had short telomeres. But what's far more interesting is that cloned cattle don't have shortened telomeres ... I wonder how this horse's telomere will turn out.

The Science Museum in London has what they claim is the only vaccum-tube (valve, for the English reading) computer that is still running.

They also have a cool collection of other hardware, including part of Babbage's Difference Engine, the worlds first mechanical computer.

The Science Museum in London has what they claim is the only vaccum-tube (valve, for the English reading) computer that is still running.

They also have a cool collection of other hardware, including part of Babbage's Difference Engine, the worlds first mechanical computer.

The printer was completed in 2000. It featured variable spacing and line wrapping. Not bad for something that is 100% mechanical.

It should be noted that as with the machine talked about here, this was a machine for solving simple differential equations (tides) as well as more standard types of maths (i.e., logs, sines and so on) for the production of tables. It was not a general purpose computer, that term was reserved for his Analytical Engine - which was designed but never produced. However Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace wrote some programs for it, converting equations into algorithms and generating register settings which could be punched on the Jacquard cards (Babbage pinched this idea from the manufacturers of automatic-looms, a long time before Hollerith).

If Babbage had completed the Analytical engine, we could have been in a very different world. One version would have been hypothesized in William Gibson's "The Difference Engine".

If you're in London you can see the original structural model of DNA (retort clamps and all), models of several other significant molecules, some early computers, and the Apollo 10 command module (!) all in one gallery at the Science Museum:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/

DNA structure

Personally, I think he got the most important points correct in anticipating the advantages of a Geostationary orbit. I suspect he suggested only three of them due to the huge cost of building them and he does show (correctly) that these three satellites would cover the major regions of "Africa and Europe", "China and Oceana" and "The Americas" (page three) while allowing point to point communication between the three satellites.

True, he did predict huge manned stations powered by valves with people to replace the valves but it seems harsh to critisise him for not inventing Moores Law 20 years early. Much of the rest of the text is both valid and visionary. For some other examples of his work the site has a short information page here.

While browsing the site you may also want to look at the Quicktime VR movie of the inside of Apollo 10. The Science Museums Space Gallery has always been one of my favourites and this is a nice attept to put some of it online (plus I helped in the making of this a few years back :-) ).

Personally, I think he got the most important points correct in anticipating the advantages of a Geostationary orbit. I suspect he suggested only three of them due to the huge cost of building them and he does show (correctly) that these three satellites would cover the major regions of "Africa and Europe", "China and Oceana" and "The Americas" (page three) while allowing point to point communication between the three satellites.

True, he did predict huge manned stations powered by valves with people to replace the valves but it seems harsh to critisise him for not inventing Moores Law 20 years early. Much of the rest of the text is both valid and visionary. For some other examples of his work the site has a short information page here.

While browsing the site you may also want to look at the Quicktime VR movie of the inside of Apollo 10. The Science Museums Space Gallery has always been one of my favourites and this is a nice attept to put some of it online (plus I helped in the making of this a few years back :-) ).

Personally, I think he got the most important points correct in anticipating the advantages of a Geostationary orbit. I suspect he suggested only three of them due to the huge cost of building them and he does show (correctly) that these three satellites would cover the major regions of "Africa and Europe", "China and Oceana" and "The Americas" (page three) while allowing point to point communication between the three satellites.

True, he did predict huge manned stations powered by valves with people to replace the valves but it seems harsh to critisise him for not inventing Moores Law 20 years early. Much of the rest of the text is both valid and visionary. For some other examples of his work the site has a short information page here.

While browsing the site you may also want to look at the Quicktime VR movie of the inside of Apollo 10. The Science Museums Space Gallery has always been one of my favourites and this is a nice attept to put some of it online (plus I helped in the making of this a few years back :-) ).

1783 Montgolfier Brothers France

1849 George Cayley England

1871 Louis P. Mouillard "L'Empire de l'Air"

1878 Alphonse Penaud "Recherches sur la Resistance de l'Air"

1889 Otto Lilienthal "Birdflight as the Basis for Aviation"

1896 Otto Lilienthal dies

1896 Samuel P. Langley USA

1902 Frost Ornithopter England

1903 Wright Brothers USA

1906 Santos Dumont France/Brazil

1908 Glenn H. Curtiss

1908 Samual F Cody England
source, another source

Note, that the year of Lilienthal's death is also (not coincidentally) the last of his more than 2,000 flights (or glides, if you prefer). Interestingly, in the same year he had completed the construction of a powered glider (compressed CO2).

Following in Lilienthal's footsteps, efforts to invent an airplane became commonplace in the 1890's. The majority of the efforts were in Europe, including Captain F. Ferber, Henri Robart, Solirene, Levavasseur, Clement Ader, Percy Pilcher, and Sir Hiram Maxim. In the U.S., prominent attempts were made by Octave Chanute and Samuel Pierpont Langley.

Wilbur Wright wrote in 1912 that "no one else grasped the basics of human flight as clearly and throughly as he did".
And I guess, they were not the only ones influenced by his writings.

There's Ironbridge Gorge if you like historical engineering stuff - it's name comes from the cast iron beridge that was built across the gorge in 1779. It was where modern iron-working was developed.
In London, there's the Thames barrier - a major part of London's flood defences, the Science Museum, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the spot that longitude is measured from and where the worlds timezones are based on (any pedants who want to reply to this pointing outthat an average of a collection of atomic clocks throughout the world is now used will get slapped and told to bugger off and stop being such an annoying pedantic twat...) There's also London Open House, which is more of an architecture thing really, and is mostly only for one weekend a year, but they do have events all year round.

There are a number of fascinating museums and sites in the UK that chronical the industrial revolution. Start at Ironbridge which is literally where it all started - the first industrial scale ironworks were here. Also take in the National Railway Museum in York which details the rise and development of the railways. The Science Museum in London is a more general review of science and industry, but includes some fascinating exhibits on (mainly British) science of that time. Finally - representing an earlier pivotal period - is the Greenwich Royal Observatory also in London that tells the story of the development of accurate clocks that allowed global navigation and exploration.

The UK is full of historical sites of that era, when Britain lead the world in science and industry. A historically-inclined geek's paradise.

Worth a visit....

The website is here

The geothermal electricity plants in New Zealand are pretty cool, they runs tours and stuff. You can also check the Echelon base at Waihopai while your there too ;-)

Here. They seek to create physical items (clocks and libraries are two items they name) that will last for very, very long periods of time. This diagram shows what is meant by the "long now", and this is a link to their first prototype clock that is on display in the Science Museum in the UK (the second clock on the page).

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/fusion/rea ctors.asp

It's used as the neutron-absorbing material in a closed heat-exchange loop, and a 1m thick blanket of molten lithium is needed to capture 100% of the neutrons, and for just about everything else, too.

I know nothing about holograms but, when I visited the Science Museum of London (please, do so if you ever come to the UK, it is a great visit: They have there huge machines capable of calculating second order differential equations mechanically and such stuff) I got really impressed with the optics part, showing PIECE of hologram where you could perfectly see the whole thing by choosing the correct angle. Really nice.

...you must go and see the working model of Babbage's difference engine #2 at the Science Museum. It was completed in 1991 by the staff using Babbage's drawings and worked first time.

Thought I'd do my bit for British Tourism and point out there is a pretty fantastic replica and some other groovy stuff at the science museum - all free to get in and they've also got some groovy robot stuff and a real Cray 1 (looks like a sixties sofa, you'll see what I mean if you go there!).

In Britain some museums (eg the Natural History Museum) are counted as academic institutions so they appear in .ac.uk along with the universities. Strangely, the next-door Science Museum seems not to appreciate this and is redirecting from its old nmsi.ac.uk domain to something much less classy. Darn, that Slashdot goatse indicator is spoiling the surprise of clicking on the links to find out what the domains actually are :-(.

Clarke was published in "Wireless World" 1945 about the possibility of global communications using only 3 satellites. Today most satellites are placed in Geosynchronous [Geostationary] orbit, nicknamed the clarke orbit, at approximately 22,300 miles above the equator.

Clarks original paper can be found here

Clarke is a scientist with many credientials completely separate from his fiction writing.

I first fell in love with the Analytical Engine years ago after reading an article in Sci Am. The most fascinating feature which wasn't even addressed in the review is that it was programmable. I'm not sure if it was Turing-complete, though since it had both branching and looping mechanisms it must have been, but even the conceptualization of a programmable device during the age of iron and steam is just astounding. Maybe someday I'll get to The Science Museum and be able to watch the Analytical Engine in action.

The Difference Engine number two was ahead of its time, indeed. In a head to head polynomial calculation test with a Windows-based Canon BJ Notebook BN22 (with built-in ink-jet printer), the mechanical Difference Engine initially beat the pants off the laptop, but was then overtaken. Not bad for a technology that was concieved around 160 years before its competitor.

From this account, we find the following description from a witness:

"...With the windows overhead slugging the Canon, the additional time taken for 31-digit extended precision arithmetic, and the printer buffer soaking up results before making them visible to the race referees, the Babbage engine produced nine 31-digit results before the Canon bubble jet printer blasted off the starting blocks. It then spewed out the first 50 results in little more than the time for the Babbage machine to produce one more result. The hare finally overtook the tortoise."

Wow! Not bad for a version 2.0 product. Consider the advancements it would have made had Babbage been successful all those years before.

In the sciencemuseum in Londen they built Difference engine no.2. See Babbage at the science museum

If you want old-skool computers, go to the Science Museum in london. They have a recreation of the first computer in the world (powered by a handle). Good work, Mr. Babbage.