Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 3 (1843).djvu/677

Rh. By Charles Babbage, Esq.—Philosophical Transactions. London, 1826.

7. On Errors common to many Tables of Logarithms. By Charles Babbage, Esq.—Memoirs of the Astronomical Society, London, 1827.

8. Report of the Committee appointed by the Council of the Royal Society to consider the subject referred to in a communication received by them from the Treasury respecting Mr. Babbage's Calculating Engine, and to report thereon. London, 1829.

9. Economy of Manufactures, chap. xx. 8vo, London, 1832.

10. Article on Babbage's Calculating Engine.—Edinburgh Review, July 1834. No. 120. vol. lix.

The present state of the Difference Engine, which has always been the property of Government, is as follows:—The drawings are nearly finished, and the mechanical notation of the whole, recording every motion of which it is susceptible, is completed. A part of that Engine, comprising sixteen figures, arranged in three orders of differences, has been put together, and has frequently been used during the last eight years. It performs its work with absolute precision. This portion of the Difference Engine, together with all the drawings, are at present deposited in the Museum of King's College, London.

Of the, which forms the principal object of the present memoir, we are not aware that any notice has hitherto appeared, except a Letter from the Inventor to M. Quetelet, Secretary to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Brussels, by whom it was communicated to that body. We subjoin a translation of this Letter, which was itself a translation of the original, and was not intended for publication by its author.

"A Letter from Mr. Babbage announces that he has for six months been engaged in making the drawings of a new calculating machine of far greater power than the first.

"'I am myself astonished,' says Mr. Babbage, 'at the power I have been enabled to give to this machine; a year ago I should not have believed this result possible. This machine is intended to contain a hundred variables (or numbers susceptible of