[Leica] Re. Babbage Difference Engine

[lrzeitlin at aol.com]

 Herbert Kramer’s photos of the Babbage Difference Engine are revealing. To modern computer nerds it is the Holy Grail of technology, often discussed but never seen. As a young college student I used to walk by a building on campus that emitted sounds like a threshing machine. One day I wandered in and found that it was the home of the Aiken Mark 1 computer, a 30 foot long electro mechanical device that was like a Frieden Calculating machine on steroids. The noise was the sound of thousands of relays opening and closing. It took 3 seconds to add a pair of numbers, about 16 seconds to divide them. Dr. Aiken started work on it before WW2 to crank out data for the military. I was shown around the lab by An Wang, a graduate student, who later invented the core memory and founded Wang computing.The Babbge Enngine looks like the guts of an old Freiden Calculator instead of a combination of a Hammond organ and a telephone switchboard. Neither looks like my iPhone at all.
Larry Z