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Charles
Babbage - The Difference Engine Limitations
The Difference Engine
was impressive, but Babbage saw that it had real limitations in two respects:
- Like most machines,
the Difference Engine was engineered to mechanize a very specific kind
of work. Washing machines mechanize one kind of human labor, whereas
a steam shovel performs a very different kind of work, and the two machines
are not interchangeable. Similarly, the Difference Engine was useful
for performing only one kind of calculation at a time. When one wished
to use the Difference Engine for one of the other kinds of calculation
of which it was capable, this meant reconfiguring the structure of the
machine itself.
There
were, of course, many kinds of calculation that the Difference Engine
was not even capable of at all: for such calculations, it would be necessary
to build an entirely different machine.
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