Slashdot Mirror
Babbage Engine Printer Finally Available
MrCreosote writes: "This story from the BBC announces the availability of a printer for the Babbage Difference Engine. Originally designed to print the tables that were calculated by the difference engine, it includes advanced features such as user definable formatting and auto line wrap. It is widely believed that the lack of peripherals was a significant factor in the failure of the Difference Engine taking off and gaining a significant market share -- a situation that has led to the current Microsoft monopoly." Kudos to the folks at London's Science Museum who actually built this.
...going to write a Linux driver for it?
A beowulf of these!
(sorry! I had to!)
More seriously, wouldn't it be more interesting to have a CAD/software model of the system. By trying it out in a simulation, generations to come might learn a trick or two about engineering, thus, thinking better.
A joyous effort however.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
A computer printer that was originally designed more than 150 years ago has finally been built and will go on display at the Science Museum in London, UK.
:) )
And I thought getting hardware support for Linux took a long time!
(Sorry, couldn't resist it
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The Babbage Engine is dead, all right? Can't you people just give it up? Face it, there's no hope for the Babbage Engine ever coming back.
C'mon. Grow up and get a real computer.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
it is worthwhile to understand the past.
When an anthropologist makes a flint knife, is he wasting his time because he can by a far superior pocket knife for a couple of bucks?
Are paleontologists wasting their time trying to understand dinosaurs because they are extinct?
There are three good reasons I can immediately see to build something like this.
(1) It helps us get a better appreciation exactly what our ancestors were capable of doing.
A lot of people have crackpot economic and social theories that flourish in ignorance of history. We have a tendency to think that the way things turned out was inevitable; it is important to question these assumptions. What had happened if Babbage had more time and resources? Things could have been very different
(2) It has educational value -- it can teach students about mechanics and mathematics.
(3) It is important for designers to understand the basic principles of computational machines, and no better way to understand basic principles than looking at real examples early primitive machines. Sure you can plug together boards and create a powerful computer, but what about people in the future who will create entirely new computational technologies such as mechanical nanocomputers? These people will need to have a database of basic designs.
Who knows, maybe someday we'll have the quantum equivalent of mercury delay tubes in some future computer. Part of the charm of computer science is that in many ways there is nothing new under the sun.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The French had an image-capable fax system running over telegraph lines in *1869* - using synchronised pendulums kept in time with tacho pulses. The input end was a contact point moving over an embossed foil or similar to give a pulsed current representing the image or text. Each tacho pulse represented one raster line, and the printing was direct, using electrochromic ink to respond to the incoming pulses. I think it operated over ~20 km at least.
There was a reference to this in New Scientist about 5 years ago.
Not bad, 20 years ahead of the telephone!
Ooh, I'm dying for a sig...
I hope I'm not alone at being awestruck at what this man accomplished so long ago. It's rare in the present that something is envisioned so far ahead of it's time that it takes decades to let manufacturing technologies to catch up with IT instead of developing uses for an already made product. Also, he designed the device without a working prototype yet it works flawlessly IRL. I know if I were to design something that grandiose on paper, it wouldn't work at all :^) All I can say is "I'm not worthy" :^)
Here's a page full of links and info on not only Babbage and his engine but also emulation of his Analytical Engine. There are also links to download the source for the mathematical function library and the java.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Apparently, it "crashed" last night, and they'd been up all night trying to unjam the mechanism (the equivalent of rebooting!) Plus ca change.