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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.
A link with pictures and its still up? go slashdot crowd go! gotta burn them all!
"Digg effect" is worthless anyway, especially in comparison to a Slashdotting. The issue obviously wasnt caused by the "digg effect" if some slashdotters managed to get it when it appeared here later.
And AP is right, this isnt a contest. Ill care that digg gets content first when the comments are worth reading.
(btw this is posted as AC because I don't have a Slashdot account, so don't call me biased)
Yeah, fair point - I know it;s not a competition.
/.'s editor bias.
But I have to admit I don't mind doing a bit of promo for a site that doesn't suffer from
Aaah. But what about people who correct those that say "maths" and tell them it is actually "math"? I reckon they should be shot in the head.