Accession No
2339
Brief Description
portion of the Babbage Difference Engine No. 1, designed by Charles Babbage 1822–1834, parts manufactured by Joseph Clement c. 1830, engine portion assembled by Charles’s son Henry Babbage, c. 1879, English
Origin
England; London
Maker
Babbage, Henry Provost [assembler] Clement, Joseph [parts maker] Babbage, Charles [designer] Babbage, Benjamin Herschel [leaflet author]
Class
calculating
Earliest Date
1879
Latest Date
1886
Inscription Date
1886
Material
wood; metal (brass, steel); paper
Dimensions
336mm (width), 318mm (depth), 385mm (height)
Special Collection
Provenance
Transferred from Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 1978.
Inscription
Description Notes
Portion of the Babbage Difference Engine No. 1, designed by Charles Babbage 1822–1834, parts manufactured by Joseph Clement c. 1830, Engine portion assembled by Charles’s son Henry Babbage, c. 1879. English.
Square wooden base carries series of brass pillars with four storeys of flat brass plates set between them. Various cogs mounted between the plates, connecting to a set at one side which carry cylinders covered in paper and marked with the numbers 0 - 9 (very faded).
With copy of 8-page leaflet: B. Herschel Babbage, Babbage’s Calculating Machine, or Difference Engine. A description of a portion of this machine put together in 1833 and now exhibited by permission of the Board of Works, in the Educational Division of the South Kensington Museum (London: Science and Art Department, 1872). [Author’s full name is Benjamin Herschel Babbage. Booklet is in poor condition and fragile - avoid handling]. Also with piece of paper, broken into two fragments and with parts missing, inscribed in manuscript: “of Babbage Difference Engine presented to the University by Major General Babbage 1886.” [Major General Babbage is Henry Provost Babbage]. Also envelope inscribed “G. 199 Paper of descriptions” [G. 199 is the Cavendish Laboratory’s designation]. Also 3 manuscript pages of notes relating to the material donated to Cambridge University, signed “H P Babbage Dec 1886”.
References
Mikey McGovern; 'Charles Babbage's difference engine'; Explore Whipple Collections online article; Whipple Museum of the History of Science; University of Cambridge: https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/explore-whipple-collections/calculating-devices/charles-babbages-difference-engine
Events
Description
A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to compute and tabulate polynomial functions. Such tables had important uses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in particular for navigation at sea, and they were traditionally computed and typeset by hand, a process that often introduced errors. In 1822, Charles Babbage proposed that these human “computers” could be replaced by a machine, capable of performing calculations and printing the resultant tables, error free.
The basic operation of the Difference Engine is to transform multiplication into addition by utilising the method of finite differences. This is achieved by ‘programming’ in a function and setting the machine going—though in this case it must be turned by hand. The machine proved exceptionally complicated to build, however, and despite receiving over £17,000 from the British Government, Babbage was never able to successfully construct a working engine. After his death, Babbage’s son Henry continued to work on the problem, having inherited original components made during his father’s failed construction attempts. By recombining these components, Henry produced this partial fragment in 1879, as a means of demonstrating the feasibility of his father’s design. That original design was to have seven axes, while this fragment has only 2. So although it demonstrates the working of the Difference Engine, it can only perform very simple calculations. Indeed it was used in the 1950s in Cambridge University’s computer laboratories to demonstrate the automation of simple addition.
18/11/2013
Created by: Joshua Nall on 18/11/2013
FM:45505
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