Bye Bye Babbage: the most awesome mechanical calculator good bye party
Ғылым және технология
There are amazing mechanical calculators, and then there is the Babbage Difference Engine #2. On loan to the Computer History Museum for the last 8 years, it is going back to our benefactor and rightful owner Nathan Myhrvold next week. This is the most amazing mechanical calculator I have ever seen - and by some margin. It was quite a noisy party when I recorded, so I recommend to turn on the closed captions to follow along.
It is the achievement of a lone 19th century British genius, the result of a lifetime of theoretical designs with pen and paper only. Designed by mathematician Charles Babbage, it was not built until 150 years later. And it worked! Now how is that for brainpower.
100% genius, 50% crazy, Babbage could not get along even with his most ardent supporters. His Analytical Engine machines, many years in advance of their time, are considered the first true programmable computers, and are entirely mechanical. This one, a simpler side project really, is not as programmable, but could finally be built from Babbage's drawings in 2002. It calculates things like logarithm and sine tables to a high degree of precision, using the finite difference technique of evaluating polynomials. Hence the name "Difference Engine". This is his second attempt, hence #2.
Yesterday night, a small party for the museum personnel and volunteers was organized to celebrate the end of its tenure at the museum. And for the first time ever, they got it to actually print. The printer was not perfectly adjusted, but I think it only adds to the charm.
More on the Babbage Differential Engine:
www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
This series of video explains amazingly clearly how it works:
• Babbage's Difference E...
Пікірлер: 49
I saw a demo of this machine at the Computer History Museum some time when it was first brought in there. It really cannot be stated how loud the machine was! It was really something else.
You should get one. Kids could use it for homework and I bet your wife would love to have that in the living room. :-)
@Poopshit420
Жыл бұрын
Who wouldn’t be fascinated by such a thing?
Beautiful!!! Thanks for showing us!
A great man but as I understand only 3 people went to his funeral. He managed to alienate and loose all his friends, family and admirers. Thankfully remembered for what we now know what he achieved!
We truly _stand on the shoulders of giants!_
Wow, what a sound. This wonderful mechanical sound, and then the bell like ring of the tines(?) advancing the number dials.
Fabulous. What an impressive machine, so glad you brought us the video. Many thanks.
I don't believe it's proper to call Babbage crazy, he spent much of his own money on trying to get this machine built. When a person has a lot of money, he is called eccentric, not crazy. But Babbage spent his and other peoples' money trying to get it built. His theory was sound, but the technology of the day wasn't good enough to make the precision parts. It had to be made big because of this reason. It could be made smaller with todays Technology. But this is still an amazing machine. Search for more KZread videos of it actually calculating.
Ed is is like a real life Morshu from Legend of Zelda, except more normal looking
…When it took units of FORCE to complete Floating Point Operations!!
amazing. thanks Marc
Fabulous machine, but way too much ambient noise for me to hear the otherwise very good narration. I thought museums were supposed to be quiet.
@CuriousMarc
8 жыл бұрын
+Anton Nym I wrote close captions. But you need to turn them on to see them. Little CC button at the bottom.
@antonnym214
8 жыл бұрын
+CuriousMarc oh, nice going. I"ll definitely check it out.
I wonder what modern mechanical design and construction could do in binary.
looks like cranking speed is important because there are non guided weights in there that could swing and probably irritate the function.
The bart of technology, with me, Brian Badonde....... BING.
How many q-bits ?
Этот чувак, что создал эту машину- супер крут!
I wonder what Nathan Myhrvold is doing with it now? Does it just hang out in the living room? No issues with that, just curious.
And the answer is ... 42!
Why did it have to be so large? Most mechanical calculator are desk top sized
@angoose2515
4 жыл бұрын
Nathan Pratt you couldn’t make parts that small and intricate back then, so it needed to be large.
@nathanpratt3058
4 жыл бұрын
@@angoose2515 I do believe it was over thought, i think the designer could have simplified it It looks beautiful none the less
42
Good tool for mining (joke)
Now Japanese would miniaturize this calculator to the thickness of a credit card so it would be a standing metal sheet 3 x 2 meters wobbling and tilting by its own weight and making those "woowwow wuwuw" tin noises.
Why does everyone swoon over Babbage (who never got any of his full sized designs to work), and ignore the people who *did* get calculating machines to work?
@ffggddss
6 жыл бұрын
Because what he designed was a century ahead of its time, even if he never did manage to build one. And because his design was completely, 100% sound, as demonstrated by this modern-day construction of his Difference Engine. Babbage's failure was partly his inability to work with his helpers; but partly the limitations of precision manufacturing in the mid-19th century. The fascination lies in the fact that, had he somehow pulled this off, we would have had stored-program computers (the Analytical Engine, which was bigger and more elaborate than this, and could be programmed with punch cards!) in 1850!! I don't think anyone else can claim that. Fred
@RonJohn63
6 жыл бұрын
Coulda woulda shoulda. No matter how advanced the design... they were *not* built, but others *did* build working systems.
@ffggddss
6 жыл бұрын
Design is every bit as important as construction. The point is, he has anticipated aspects of computing devices that were revolutionary, and a lifetime and a half ahead of his time. There was *no* built and working system for a century, that did what Babbage's design had built into it. Can you cite one example of a machine built before 1901 (when Babbage was already dead for 3 decades), that could be programmed with a set of instructions, which could include conditional branching and GOTO statements? Or that was Turing complete? The Analytical Engine satisfies all those criteria. Fred
@MicrobyteAlan
6 жыл бұрын
Why do we swoon over Leonardo da Vinci? He never got his designs to work.
@bombtwenty3867
5 жыл бұрын
He did get his design to work, just 150 years late.