

Plan 28: Babbage's Analytical Engine project gets underway - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/plan-28-analytical-engine-project-gets.html

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rmc
_The Science Museum doesn't have the resources to immediately make them
available to the general public_

I always wonder when I hear that. Why not just upload a torrent to The Pirate
Bay (or use amazon s3 & torrents). The geeks will make it available to the
general public.

~~~
mechanical_fish
This is sort of like asking why we need to bother to produce a careful English
translation of the works of Stanislaw Lem. Why not just paste the Polish
editions of all of his works into a big spreadsheet, one word per row, then
sort it alphabetically by word, feed it through Google's translation bot, and
upload the long list of words to Bittorrent? Then the world can have all the
words Lem ever wrote! All we'll be missing is their order.

What's wrong with this project? Everything. It's not going to serve anyone
(except, perhaps, a very tiny number of Polish linguists), it's a terrible
insult to Lem, it's a terrible insult to Lem's audience, and it reflects very
badly on the intelligence or taste of the person who carried out the plan
(i.e., me).

My understanding is that the plans for the Analytical Engine resemble any
other set of unrealized preliminary plans: They're incomplete, they're out of
order, they don't make great internal sense on the surface (because Babbage
and his collaborators didn't bother to rewrite all the old notes every time
they had a new idea), they use archaic terms and convoluted expressions for
concepts that are now simple (they weren't simple concepts when they were
first being conceived, a century before they were realized in practice), and
therefore they aren't as impressive as they could be if, say, a bright and
motivated historian spent some time piecing them together first. But, of
course, I'm no expert on the Analytical Engine; I'm just guessing based on a
few rumors I've overheard. If only I could pull an actual expert out from
behind this nearby curtain!

[cue]

[god I love the internet]

~~~
jgrahamc
Also, Babbage invented his own notation for describing the movement and
interaction of cogs, levers etc. inside the machine. He used this notation to
augment the static plans to describe the motion. He also constantly refined
the notation.

What he left behind were hundreds of nice plans of the Analytical Engine all
of which are incomplete. Plus he left his notebooks. Thousands and thousands
of pages of jottings, sketches, and thoughts. Interpreting all that is going
to be a lot of work.

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michael_dorfman
Wonderful work, jgc. I remain, as always, impressed by your efforts to bring
proper attention and respect to our intellectual forefathers.

A tip of the hat to you, sir.

~~~
jgrahamc
Very kind of you. Here's the BBC's version:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15001514>

~~~
arethuza
So how are you going to power this thing once it is built? Wind, water or
steam? :-)

Edit: I do hope it will be steam powered! (At least once - just so someone can
record what it would sound like).

~~~
jgrahamc
Steam. The goal of the project is to be historically accurate and it appears
that Babbage himself felt that steam would be necessary (unlike the hand-
cranked Difference Engine No. 2). Only a small steam engine is likely to be
needed and I have had offers from various people of expertise.

~~~
0x12
Do you need a license to operate a steam engine in the UK?

------
ericHosick
Kinda Relevant: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difference_Engine>

And a great book. Gibson rocks.

------
Tinned_Tuna
Does anyone think that these plans in conjunction with 3D printers would
result in a lot of fun?

~~~
jgrahamc
It's not outside the realm of possibility that by the time we have done the
study of the plans followed by a computer simulation that the construction of
the machine may be simply File -> Print...

On the other hand, we probably want to hand build it for historical reasons.

~~~
stan_rogers
It would seem to me that building the Analytical Engine without following the
same sort of material and construction constraints that the Difference Engine
#2 project followed would be, in a sense, invalid. The theoretical validity of
the means of computation, the "instruction set" and so on could be proven by a
"perfect materials" simulation of the machine alone, but things like "signal
propagation" (or, rather, the mechanical equivalent thereof) are part and
parcel of the physical construction of the machine.

There has to be at least some degree of vindicating Babbage involved in a
project of this sort. If it turns out that personality conflicts and a certain
shortsightedness on the par of the BA were all that stood between the machine
as dream and a major change in the course of history (as some people believe),
that makes a very different story than the one that posits that the machine
could not have been constructed as imagined; that the partial mill's errors
were at least partly due to the fundamental limitations of the materials and
processes available for construction at the time.

Yes, it would be nice to know whether the machine could have worked in theory,
but it's a much more interesting question to consider what difference the
machine might have made if it could have worked in practice.

~~~
jgrahamc
I am with you 100% on this. That's why I got Doron Swade involved. It is
absolutely vital that this be done in a manner that means we can know whether
Babbage would have been able to construct a computer if other obstacles were
removed (such as money and his personality).

