[SIGCIS-Members] Ideas Embodied in Metal: Babbage’s Engines Dismembered and Remembered

[Brian Randell]

Hi:

I’ve just come across and read a fascinating and though-provoking account that adds significantly to the Babbage canon.

Ideas Embodied in Metal: Babbage’s Engines Dismembered and Remembered

Chap 6 of The Whipple Museum of the History of Science (Cambridge University Press, August 2019) pp 119-158.

Simon Schaffer

Abstract
This chapter seeks to extend previous studies of Charles Babbage’s celebrated difference engine through an examination of a rare surviving fragment in the Whipple Museum’s collection. Constructed from scrap parts inherited by Charles’s son, Henry, in order to relaunch the engine project, the fragment has much to reveal about the afterlife of Babbage’s most famous failure. An appendix to the chapter also publishes for the first time key documents relating to Henry Babbage’s project.

Full text: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/whipple-museum-of-the-history-of-science/ideas-embodied-in-metal-babbages-engines-dismembered-and-remembered/F1CFD1014E5C02B61C0CE57E2D350CBF/core-reader

Cheers

Brian Randell


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