Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/79

Rh principle was arrived at in a short time. As soon as that was attained, the next step was to teach the mechanism which could foresee to act upon that foresight. This was not so difficult: certain mechanical means were soon devised which, although very far from simple, were yet sufficient to demonstrate the possibility of constructing such machinery.

The process of simplifying this form of carriage occupied me, at intervals, during a long series of years. The demands of the Analytical Engine, for the mechanical execution of arithmetical operations, were of the most extensive kind. The multitude of similar parts required by the Analytical Engine, amounting in some instances to upwards of fifty thousand, rendered any, even the simplest, improvement of each part a matter of the highest importance, more especially as regarded the diminished amount of expenditure for its construction.

That portion of Difference Engine, No. 1, which during the last twenty years has been in the museum of King's College, at Somerset House, is represented in the woodcut opposite the title page.

It consists of three columns; each column contains six cages; each cage contains one figure-wheel.

The column on the right hand has its lowest figure-wheel covered by a shade which is never removed, and to which the reader's attention need not be directed.

The figure-wheel next above may be placed by hand at any one of the ten digits. In the woodcut it stands at zero.

The third, fourth, and fifth cages are exactly the same as the second.

The sixth cage contains exactly the same as the four just