The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer (Repost)
The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer
Publisher: Viking Adult | ISBN: 0670910201 | edition 2001 | PDF | 352 pages | 17,6 mb
Publisher: Viking Adult | ISBN: 0670910201 | edition 2001 | PDF | 352 pages | 17,6 mb
The author is in a unique position to appreciate the technical difficulties of the time, as he led a team that built a working model of a Difference Engine, using contemporary materials, in time for Babbage's 1991 bicentenary. The meat of the book is comprised of the story of the first computing machine design as gathered from the technical notes and drawings curated by Swade. Though Babbage certainly had problems translating his ideas into brass, the reader also comes to understand his fruitless, drawn-out arguments with his funders. Swade had it comparatively easy, though his depictions of the frustrating search for money and then working out how best to build the enormous machine in the late 1980s are delightful.