In July of 2012 xRez Studio was contracted to shoot a unique “close up” gigapixel image of the Babbage Difference Engine at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
The “Difference Engine No. 2″ was never realized or constructed in the lifetime of famed mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. However it was funded over 150 years later by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold. The device required 10 years to build the 8,000 hand-finished machined pieces. It was built, in part to answer the question of whether Babbage’s machine would have been successful had it been built when it was designed between 1847 and 1849. The success in building this device allows us to speculate on whether his designs for the “Analytic Engine” (a general purpose mechanical computer) would have followed ushering in the computer age 100 years earlier than it occurred. This intriguing idea was explored in a fictional alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling called “The Difference Engine” that helped define the Steampunk genre. Two copies of the machines exist today; the first is displayed under glass in London, and another at the Computer History Museum, which has daily operational demonstrations for the public.
via xrez
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