[Leica] Re. Babbage Difference Engine

[Herbert Kanner]

 Jay Forester independently invented core memory. I think a) Forester was first, and b) his arrangement of wiring reflected the most commonly used one. My info is not certain, so if you know more about the comparison of the two patents, please enlighten me.

Herb

Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org

Question Authority and the authorities will question you.

> On Oct 20, 2015, at 7:25 AM, Larry Zeitlin via LUG <lug at leica-users.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> 
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