17 Oct
2010
17 Oct
'10
7:48 p.m.
ben wrote:
I suspect it comes under *mass production * of parts
all the same
quality. That did not come about until the late 19 th century.
Joseph Clement's work shows that he was able to achieve that in the
early 19th century. It didn't become standard practice until later.
The fact that most people couldn't build a working Difference Engine or
Analytical Engine in the 19th century doesn't prove that it couldn't
have been done by someone, such as Clement. The reasons that Babbage
didn't get a working DE or AE built are financial and political, not
technical. By 1859 Georg Scheutz had built several working DEs based on
Babbage's design.
Eric