For many of us, the computer is the symbol of our hypermodernity, the image of how vastly we differ--culturally, economically, socially and politically--from past generations. And many of us think of ...

Frustrated by human error, mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage designed a machine to perform mathematical functions and automatically print the results. Library of Congress When today’s number ...

The Babbage Engine Exhibit opens May 10 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. The central artifact of the exhibit, a faithful construction of Englishman Charles Babbage's Difference ...

A rare liveaction and closeup study of the only existing Babbage Difference Engine a machine designed in the first quarter of the 19thCentury by English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage The ...

As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

Introduction -- Carrying tens : Pascal, Morland, and the challenge of machine calculation -- First carry ; Babbage and Clement mechanize table making -- Artisans and their philosophers : Leibniz and ...

From the crew that brought you The Office.