{"id":160,"date":"2006-06-14T10:40:30","date_gmt":"2006-06-14T08:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=160"},"modified":"2007-06-04T08:30:24","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T06:30:24","slug":"difference-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=160","title":{"rendered":"Difference engine"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\"><img id=\"image159\" src=\"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/wp-content\/2006\/06\/DifferenceEngine.jpg\" alt=\"DifferenceEngine.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>today 184 years ago <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Babbage\">Charles Babbage<\/a> proposed his <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Difference_engine\">difference engine<\/a> to the Royal astronomic society.<!--more--><br \/>\n<img id=\"image161\" src=\"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/wp-content\/2006\/06\/DifferenceEngine1part.jpg\" alt=\"DifferenceEngine1part.jpg\"  align=\"left\" \/><br \/>\n(listed on Wikipedia&#8217;s frontpage today).  Babbage died before he could finish his device, but the the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemuseum.org.uk\/\">London Science Museum<\/a> constructed a working Difference Engine ( the no. 2 design) from Babbages plans. The side shows a wood cut from a part of the difference engine 1, that was build 1833 (left image from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbi.umn.edu\/exhibits\/cb.html\">here<\/a>). When he did not succeed in building his difference engines Babbage strived for more: the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fourmilab.net\/babbage\/\">analytical engine<\/a>: a disign that if it ever had been realized would have been a mechanic <a href=\"http:\/\/ironphoenix.org\/tril\/tm\/\">Turing machine<\/a>. The worlds first computer program was a  program for the analytical engine to compute <a href=\"http:\/\/mathworld.wolfram.com\/BernoulliNumber.html\">Bernoulli numbers<\/a> by  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sdsc.edu\/ScienceWomen\/lovelace.html\">Ada Lovelace<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>today 184 years ago Charles Babbage proposed his difference engine to the Royal astronomic society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}