Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 3 (1843).djvu/692

682 of expressing and combining amongst each other positive and negative quantities. To accomplish this end, there is, above every column, both of the mill and of the store, a disc, similar to the discs of which the columns themselves consist. According as the digit on this disc is even or uneven, the number inscribed on the corresponding column below it will be considered as positive or negative. This granted, we may, in the following manner, conceive how the signs can be algebraically combined in the machine. When a number is to be transferred from the store to the mill, and vice versâ, it will always be transferred with its sign, which will be effected by means of the cards, as has been explained in what precedes. Let any two numbers then, on which we are to operate arithmetically, be placed in the mill with their respective signs. Suppose that we are first to add them together; the operation-cards will command the addition: if the two numbers be of the same sign, one of the two will be entirely effaced from where it was inscribed, and will go to add itself on the column which contains the other number; the machine will, during this operation, be able, by means of a certain apparatus, to prevent any movement in the disc of signs which belongs to the column on which the addition is made, and thus the result will remain with the sign which the two given numbers originally had. When two numbers have two different signs, the addition commanded by the card will be changed into a subtraction through the intervention of mechanisms which are brought into play by this very difference of sign. Since the subtraction can only be effected on the larger of the two numbers, it must be arranged that the disc of signs of the larger number shall not move while the smaller of the two numbers is being effaced from its column and subtracted from the other, whence the result will have the sign of this latter, just as in fact it ought to be. The combinations to which algebraical subtraction give rise, are analogous to the preceding. Let us pass on to multiplication. When two numbers to be multiplied are of the same sign, the result is positive; if the signs are different, the product must be negative. In order that the machine may act conformably to this law, we have but to conceive that on the column containing the product of the two given numbers, the digit which indicates the sign of that product, has been formed by the mutual addition of the two digits that respectively indicated the signs of the two given numbers; it is then obvious