[Leica] Babbage Difference Engine Funeral

[Spencer Cheng]

Herbert,

I am sorry to hear about this. I saw the Difference Engine (along with the Wang minicomputer which was the first computer I learnt to program on) a few years ago when I was in San Jose for some meetings. I guess I will have to visit London Science Museum if I actually want to see it working.

Without the Difference Engine, steam-punk fiction would never have been created. :-)

In time, Myhrvold’s estate will probably donate it back to the Computer Museum. Not everyone wants a 5 ton machine sitting in their living room (and, of course, the tax break).

Regards,
Spencer

> On Feb 24, 2016, at 20:52, Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Over eight years ago, at the instigation of Bill Gates, the Science Museum in London approached Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft, for financial help in completing the Babbage Difference Engine. The Museum had built the larger component, the one that did the actual arithmetic. The additional financing was to enable them to build the smaller but very complex component that would print the results on a paper roll and, most important, create a mold in soft plaster of paris, that when hardened would enable the creation of a full-page plate, ready to go into a printing press, by pouring molten type metal into the mold.
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