BABBAGE'S REPORT ON THE SCHEUTZ-ENGINE

BABBAGE, CHARLES.

MÉCANIQUE APPLIQUÉE. Note sur la machine suédoise de MM. Schutz pour calculer les Tables mathématique par la méthode des différences, et en imprimer les résultats sur des planches stéréotypes.

Paris, Mallet-Bachelier, 1855. 4to. Extract, bound in new full blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine. A bit of brownspotting, otherwise a fine. [Babbage:] Pp. 557-560. [Entire issue: (3), 538-63 pp.].

Scarce first publication of Babbage's early report on the difference engine, which had been built by the Swedish printer Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard, based upon Babbage's own designs.

"In 1854 Babbage's ideas came to the attention of George and Edvard Scheutz, a father and son from Sweden. After reading a description of the Difference Engine (by Babbage), they designed and built their own version. This machine was smaller and lighter than the engine conceived by Babbage. They used gears and levers that would have been suitable for the mechanism of a clock. In contrast, Babbage used technology that would have been appropriate for a steam engine. Babbage's engine, if completed, would have filled a room. The Scheutz engine sat nicely on a table and looked like a complicated music box. Babbage was pleased with Scheutz's engine and praised it publicly [In the present paper]. (DSB).

"Georg Scheutz's interest in calculating machines had begun twenty-five years earlier, when he first heard about Babbage's Difference Engine no. 1. In 1834, after reading Dionysius Lardner's technical article about the Difference Engine, Scheutz and his son began building their own engine, completing a crude prototype model in 1843 (Scheutz Engine no. 1) and an improved and more highly finished example in the 1850s (Schultz Engine no. 2.). As part of his effort to promote the Scheutz Engine, Babbage gave a talk on it before the Académie des Sciences, illustrated with drawings by his son Henry, in which Babbage's system of mechanical notation was used to describe the machine's construction and functions. This talk was published without illustrations in the Académie's Comptes rendus [the present paper]. (OOC).

See Hook & Norman. Origins of Cyberspace 73.

Order-nr.: 44733