Babbage Analytical Engine Designs to Be Digitized

[Graham Klyne]

Could this be a basis for a collaborative 3D printing project....?

#g
--

Babbage Analytical Engine Designs to Be Digitized
BBC News (09/21/11)

The Science Museum in London has agreed to digitize Charles Babbage's original
plans, developed in the late 1830s, for a mechanical computer, which could be
used to create a full working model of his Analytical Engine. Researchers are
working on a project to build a mechanical computer based on Babbage's sketches,
and they say the digital documents will enable them to analyze the different
ideas among the sketches and settle on a definitive version of the machine.
After studying the documents, the researchers will produce a computer simulation
of the Analytical Engine before actual construction begins. "The machine itself
is going to be enormous, about the size of a small steam train, so the
simulation is important to allow anyone access," says Science Museum in London
researcher John Graham-Cumming. The Analytical Engine is expected to have the
equivalent of about 675 bytes of memory and run at a clock speed of 7Hz. "[The
Analytical Engine] is actually quite fast given that it's all in cogs, so
Babbage was thinking about something relatively powerful," Graham-Cumming says.
The museum plans to make the sketches available to researchers worldwide.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15001514

[David F. Flanders]

Yes!