Page:Memoirs of Royal Astronomical Society Volume 01.djvu/332



T is known to several of the members of this society that I have been engaged during the last few months in the contrivance of machinery, which by the application of a moving force may calculate any tables that may be required. I am now able to acquaint the society with the successful results at which I have arrived; and although it might at the first view appear a bold undertaking to attempt the construction of an engine which should execute operations so various as those which contribute to the formation of the numerous tables that are constantly required for astronomical purposes, yet to those who are acquainted with the method of differences the difficulty will be in a considerable degree removed.

I have taken the method of differences as the principle on which my machinery is founded; and in the engine which is just finished I have limited myself to two orders of differences. With this machine I have repeatedly constructed tables of square and triangular numbers, as well as a table from the singular formula $$x^2+x+41$$, which comprises amongst its terms so many prime numbers.

These, as well as any others which the engine is competent to form, are produced almost as rapidly as an assistant can write them down. The machinery by which these calculations are effected is extremely simple in its kind, consisting of a small number of different parts frequently repeated.

In the prosecution of this plan, I have contrived methods by which type shall be set up by the machine in the order determined by the calculation; and the arrangements are of such a nature that, if executed, there shall not exist the possibility of error in any printed copy of tables computed by this engine. Of several of these latter contrivances I have made models; and, from the experiments I have already made, I feel great confidence in the complete success of the plans I have proposed.

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