Explain the achievement of the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage, and explain the challenge he faced in trying to construct the larger model.
What will be an ideal response?
In 1823, Babbage extended the ideas of Pascal and Leibniz and constructed a working model of the largest and most sophisticated mechanical calculator of its time. This machine, called the Difference Engine, could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to six significant digits, and it could solve polynomial equations and other complex mathematical problems as well. Babbage tried to construct a larger model of the Difference Engine that would be capable of working to an accuracy of 20 significant digits, but after 12 years of work, he had to give up his quest. The technology available in the 1820s and 1830s was not sufficiently advanced to manufacture cogs and gears to the precise tolerances his design required. Like Galileo's helicopter or Jules Verne's atomic submarine, Babbage's ideas were fundamentally sound but years ahead of their time. (In 1991, the London Museum of Science, using Babbage's original plans, built an actual working model of the Difference Engine. It worked exactly as Babbage had planned.)
You might also like to view...
What will be the output of the following statement?
txtBox.Text = (2 / 3).ToString("P4") (A) 0.6666 (B) 0.6667 (C) 66.66% (D) 66.6667%
The cryptographic hash function requirement that guarantees that it is impossible to find an alternative message with the same hash value as a given message and prevents forgery when an encrypted hash code is used is the ___________ .
A. collision resistant B. pseudorandomness C. preimage resistant D. second preimage resistant
When you create a new tab, a new group is automatically created with it
Indicate whether the statement is true or false
What does carrier sense mean on an Ethernet network?
What will be an ideal response?