XPost: alt.lang.basic   
   From: dave-ng@nospam.tld   
      
   Sometime on Mon, 12 Dec 2005 20:34:26 +0000, Stephen J. Rush scribbled:   
      
   > On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:42:11 +0000, R Flowers wrote:   
   >   
   >> "George"  wrote in message   
   >> news:dnhgac$2rh$1@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...   
   >>> (Everything snipped!)   
   >>>   
   >>> This thread is pure nostalgia!   
   >>> Remember "Scrumpi and chips" with its 256 bytes of RAM?   
   >>> Yes, 256 bytes!   
   >>   
   >> That's nothing! When I was a kid, we had a coal fired Crawley-Leech   
   >> Automatrixatron with 16 bytes. 16! It was all mechanical (this was before   
   >> electric relays, mind you.) My brother and I had to get up at 4 in the   
   >> morning to start shoveling coal (after our morning beating), just so Mom   
   >> could play Solitaire.   
   >>   
   >> But they don't make them like that anymore...   
   >   
   > Have you seen the British Museum's Web site devoted to their Babbage   
   > Difference Engine No. 3?  Fifty decimal digits of precision and it's all   
   > mechanical.  4000 moving parts, not counting the printer.  They built it   
   > from Babbage's drawings, with a little debugging.  The thing works,   
   > grinding out tables of functions by the forward-difference method, but it   
   > needs so much torque that they had to put a 2:1 reduction gear between the   
   > crank and the mainshaft. The machine was, after all designed to be driven   
   > by a steam engine.   
      
   An interesting read is...   
      
   The Difference Engine   
   Sterling and Gibson   
      
   http://www.sfwriter.com/brdiffer.htm   
      
   -)   
      
   --   
   Dave   
   Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)