The difference engine was a mechanical calculator designed by the English mathematician Charles Babbage in the early 1820s to produce mathematical tables automatically. It used the method of finite differences, which makes it possible to compute polynomial values using only addition, and thus avoids the errors of hand calculation. The British government funded the project, but the machine was never completed in his lifetime because of its great complexity and disputes with his engineer, and Babbage moved on to the more ambitious analytical engine. A Swedish team built a working difference engine in the 1850s, and in 1991 the Science Museum in London built Babbage's improved Difference Engine No. 2 from his drawings, and it worked.
Before and after
- 12 August 1821Founding of University of Buenos Aires
- 30 October 1821Birth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- 12 December 1821Birth of Gustave Flaubert
- 1822Chios massacre
- 1822Invention of difference engine
- from 18 February 1822 to 8 March 1824Brazilian War of Independence
- from April 1822 to September 1823Royalist War
- 27 April 1822Birth of Ulysses S. Grant
- 24 May 1822Battle of Pichincha
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The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.