XPost: alt.lang.basic   
   From: nobody@nowhere.com   
      
   "Stephen J. Rush"  wrote in message   
   news:pan.2005.12.12.20.34.25.285618@bellsouth.net...   
      
   > 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.   
      
   I remember that the Polish Army was going to use a steam powered typewriter   
   to create menus for their soldiers but then they realized that they never   
   changed the meals from one day to the next so they needed no menus!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)