Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/121

Rh enable any other person, without long previous training and application, even to attempt its execution; and on my own part, to superintend its construction would demand an amount of labour, anxiety, and time which could not, after the treatment I have received, be expected from me. I therefore make no such offer.

But that I may fulfil to the utmost of my power the original expectation that I should be able to complete, for the Government, an Engine capable of calculating astronomical and nautical Tables with perfect accuracy, such as that which is described in the Reports of the Royal Society, I am willing to place at the disposal of Government (if they will undertake to execute a new Difference Engine) all those improvements which I have invented and have applied to the Analytical Engine. These comprise a complete series of drawings and explanatory notations, finished in 1849, of the Difference Engine No. 2,—an instrument of greater power as well as of greater simplicity than that formerly commenced, and now in the possession of the Government.

I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the Government of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgment of my labours, nor even the offer of those honours or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations. I might, perhaps, advance some claims to consideration, founded on my works and