Difference Engine Unboxing

Cool. Just image what the packaging would be like if it was made by Apple. [Link]

When Charles Babbage invented a massive calculating machine in 1849, he probably didn't count on the 150 years it would take to actually get the thing built.

Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 was a precursor of modern computers, capable of performing complex mathematical calculations with 31 digits of precision, all using Victorian-era rods, gears, levers and linkages.

But Babbage never completed it. It took engineers and curators at London's Science Museum almost six years of work to bring Babbage's 20 pages of blueprints to life in 1991.

Now, thanks to Microsoft multimillionaire Nathan Myhrvold, a second Difference Engine has been built and delivered to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, where trained docents will turn its brass handle to crank out the calculations Babbage dreamed of automating.