Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. Charles Babbage

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ leaving with him a drawing as his guide.

      〈UNEXPECTED DIFFICULTY EXPLAINED.〉

      These wheels arrived late one night, and the next morning I began putting them in action with my other mechanism, when, to my utter astonishment, I found they were quite unfit for their task. I examined the shape of their teeth, compared them with those in the drawings, and found they agreed perfectly; yet they could not perform their intended work. I had been so certain of the truth of my previous reasoning, that I now began to be somewhat uneasy. I reflected that, if the reasoning about which I had been so certain should prove to have been really fallacious, I could then no longer trust the power of my own reason. I therefore went over with my wheels to the artist who had formed the teeth, in order that I might arrive at some explanation of this extraordinary contradiction.

      On conferring with him, it turned out that, when he had understood fully the peculiar form of the teeth of wheels, he discovered that his wheel-cutting engine had not got amongst its divisions that precise number which I had required. He therefore had asked me whether another number, which his machine possessed, would not equally answer my object. I had inadvertently replied in the affirmative. He then made arrangements for the precise number of teeth I required; and the new wheels performed their expected duty perfectly.

      The next step was to devise means for printing the tables to be computed by this machine. My first plan was to make it put together moveable type. I proposed to make metal boxes, each containing 3,000 types of one of the ten digits. These types were to be made to pass out one by one from the {45} bottom of their boxes, when required by the computing part of the machine.

      〈VERIFICATION OF TYPE.〉

      But here a new difficulty arose. The attendant who put the types into the boxes might, by mistake, put a wrong type in one or more of them. This cause of error I removed in the following manner:—There are usually certain notches in the side of the type. I caused these notches to be so placed that all the types of any given digit possessed the same char­ac­ter­is­tic notches, which no other type had. Thus, when the boxes were filled, by passing a small wire down these peculiar notches, it would be impeded in its passage, if there were included in the row a single wrong figure. Also, if any digit were accidentally turned upside down, it would be indicated by the stoppage of the testing wire.

      One notch was reserved as common to every species of type. The object of this was that, before the types which the Difference Engine had used for its computation were removed from the iron platform on which they were placed, a steel wire should be passed through this common notch, and remain there. The tables, composed of moveable types, thus interlocked, could never have any of their figures drawn out by adhesion to the inking-roller, and then by possibility be restored in an inverted order. A small block of such figures tied together by a bit of string, remained unbroken for several years, although it was rather roughly used as a plaything by my children. One such box was finished, and delivered its type satisfactorily.

      Another plan for printing the tables, was to place the ordinary printing type round the edges of wheels. Then, as each successive number was produced by the arithmetical part, the type-wheels would move down upon a plate of soft composition, upon which the tabular number would be {46} impressed. This mould was formed of a mixture of plaster-of-Paris with other materials, so as to become hard in the course of a few hours.

      〈MOULDS AND COPPER-PLATE.〉

      The first difficulty arose from the impression of one tabular number on the mould being distorted by the succeeding one.

      I was not then aware that a very slight depth of impression from the type would be quite sufficient. I surmounted the difficulty by previously passing a roller, having longitudinal wedge-shaped projections, over the plastic material. This formed a series of small depressions in the matrix between each line. Thus the expansion arising from the impression of one line partially filled up the small depression or ditch which occurred between each successive line.

      The various minute difficulties of this kind were successively overcome; but subsequent experience has proved that the depth necessary for stereotype moulds is very small, and that even thick paper, prepared in a peculiar manner, is quite sufficient for the purpose.

      Another series of experiments were, however, made for the purpose of punching the computed numbers upon copper plate. A special machine was contrived and constructed, which might be called a co-ordinate machine, because it moved the copper plate and steel punches in the direction of three rectangular co-ordinates. This machine was afterwards found very useful for many other purposes. It was, in fact, a general shaping machine, upon which many parts of the Difference Engine were formed.

      Several specimens of surface and copper-plate printing, as well as of the copper plates, produced by these means, were exhibited at the Exhibition of 1862.

      I have proposed and drawn various machines for the purpose of calculating a series of numbers forming Tables {47} by means of a certain system called “The Method of Differences,” which it is the object of this sketch to explain.

      The first Difference Engine with which I am acquainted comprised a few figures, and was made by myself, between 1820 and June 1822. It consisted of from six to eight figures. A much larger and more perfect engine was sub­se­quent­ly commenced in 1823 for the Government.

      It was proposed that this latter Difference Engine should have six orders of differences, each consisting of about twenty places of figures, and also that it should print the Tables it computed.

      The small portion of it which was placed in the International Exhibition of 1862 was put together nearly thirty years ago. It was accompanied by various parts intended to enable it to print the results it calculated, either as a single copy on paper—or by putting together moveable types—or by stereotype plates taken from moulds punched by the machine—or from copper plates impressed by it. The parts necessary for the execution of each of these processes were made, but these were not at that time attached to the calculating part of the machine.

      A considerable number of the parts by which the printing was to be accomplished, as also several specimens of portions of tables punched on copper, and of stereotype moulds, were exhibited in a glass case adjacent to the Engine.

      〈‘EDINBURGH REVIEW.’〉

In 1834 Dr. Lardner published, in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’12 a very elaborate description of this portion of the machine, in which he explained clearly the method of Differences.

12 ‘Edinburgh Review,’ No. cxx., July, 1834.

      It is very singular that two persons, one resident in London, the other in Sweden, should both have been struck, on reading this review, with the simplicity of the math­e­mat­i­cal principle {48} of differences as applied to the calculation of Tables, and should have been so fascinated with it as to have undertaken to construct a machine of the kind.

      〈MR. DEACON—MR. SCHEUTZ.〉

      Mr. Deacon, of Beaufort House, Strand, whose mechanical skill is well known, made, for his own sat­is­fac­tion, a small model of the calculating part of such a machine, which was shown only to a few friends, and of the existence of which I was not aware until after the Swedish machine was brought to London.

      Mr. Scheutz, an eminent printer at Stockholm, had far greater difficulties to encounter. The construction of mechanism, as well as the math­e­mat­i­cal part of the question, was entirely new to him. He, however, undertook to make a machine having four differences, and fourteen places of СКАЧАТЬ