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LEGO Tech Still Going Strong
zimage writes to tell us that Andrew Carol has designed and built a working Babbage Difference Engine out of LEGO. From the article: "Before the day of computers and pocket calculators, all mathematics was done by hand. Great effort was expended to compose trigonometric and logarithmic tables for navigation, scientific investigation, and engineering purposes. In the mid-19th century, people began to design machines to automate this error prone process. Many machines of various designs were eventually built. The most famous of these machines is the Babbage Difference Engine. [...] Babbage's design could evaluate 7th order polynomials to 31 digits of accuracy. I set out to build a working Difference Engine using LEGO parts which could compute 2nd or 3rd order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits." In related, but not quite as functional, news DigitalDame2 writes to tell us that PC Magazine has an interview with LEGO "brick-artist" Nathan Sawaya, creator of their commissioned LEGO PC. There are also several pictures of the creation in addition to a contest to win the snap-together sculpture.
has a nice large article in it about Lego, which basically states that "Lego will do for robotics what iPod has done for music".
Thats a pretty huge claim - Lego's were something I was interested in when I was 5-6 years old, putting together those $100 kits my parents would buy for me.
It also seems to me that the image of the company is what's going to detract attention from any serious accomplishments. It's kind of like Toys 'R' Us getting in to the nuclear power industry - nobody would really take it seriously, because of the brand name.
I think Lego should consider doing whatever they can to shake the "just for kids" image, possibly selling stuff through another company with a different name, in order to really get attention for what they're doing.
Some older references opine that Babbage failed because the parts and the mechanical engineering of the day just weren't up to the job of building a calculating machine.
That was always questionable -- after all, England had high-precision chronometers the century before Babbage -- but if you can build a Difference Engine out of flexy plastic and gears designed for use in toys, then problems with brass are no excuse.
The other theory is that the Babbage projects failed because he kept making design changes during assembly.
Oh, and Wow. All bow to the new alpha nerd!