WI Babbage's Difference Engine No 2 had been completed

[The Dean]

WI Babbage's Difference Engine No 2 had been completed in 1849. What effects would it have had on engineering projects of the day and would Babbage then have gone on to complete his Analytical Engine?

[The Dean]

Could it have been used by Brunel or Stevenson or could the Universities and industries have accelerated the development of chemistry and metallurgy?

[Max Sinister]

The first thing people'd use them for would be complicated calculations which have to be very exact. Logarithms and such. That's what computers can do best, so that'd come before office software and such. What kind of complicated calculations did they have?

[Adamanteus]

There used to a website that had a whole timeline based around this premise. It was a little dodgy, in that it used a lot of butterflies. It went all the way to 2000, and postulated that the Analytical Engine would accelerate technological progress throughout the 19th century. Inventions such as airships, tanks, telephones, and others, appeared earlier than in OTL. Ironically, by 2000, there is little difference in tech from OTL, except that it is much more pervasive, because it had been around longer. Politically, the great powers of Europe and the U.S. are able to maintain their worldwide power base far beyond their natural lifespan due to the tech boost of the Engine.

[Max Sinister]

You're not talking about this website where Jim Carrey is knighted or ennobled by the monarch?

[The Dean]

Originally Posted by Max Sinister

The first thing people'd use them for would be complicated calculations which have to be very exact. Logarithms and such. That's what computers can do best, so that'd come before office software and such. What kind of complicated calculations did they have?

Did the engineers of that time do stress calculations? They would not need logarithms if they had a difference engine. Chemists and physicists in universities and industry would have been able to carry out their calculations far more rapidly as well.

[Bill Cameron]

Originally Posted by The Dean

Did the engineers of that time do stress calculations?

Dean,

No, they made it all up.

They would not need logarithms if they had a difference engine.

Oddly enough, using the Engine to calculate log tables was the main use Babbage had in mind. That might have been because he didn't foresee them becoming 'personal computers' when the device in question weighed hundreds of pounds, used bleeding edge machining capabilities in it's construction, and required sophisiticated maintenance.

Chemists and physicists in universities and industry would have been able to carry out their calculations far more rapidly as well.

Perhaps. I'd think there'd still be a lot of slipsticks in use, just as there was in the OTL up through the early 1970s when I was trained to use one is school. We should use the mainframe era; ~1955 to ~1970, for a guide. Businesses, industries, research facilities, and educational institutions would use the single Engines they own for statistical processing, inventory control, and other types of large scale number crunching. The processing time on an Engine would also be strictly controlled.

Occasionally the Engines would be used for 'Big Problems' just like the Crays are used now. As for 'Big Problems', we're looking for the 19th Century's version of protein folding, SETI signal processing, and the like.


Bill

[Analytical Engine]

Hi all. I was thinking that automation (particularly the assembly line) could be developed much earlier in ATL.

[The Dean]

Hi Bill

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Dean,

No, they made it all up.

I didn't know for sure, just wanted confirmation.

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Oddly enough, using the Engine to calculate log tables was the main use Babbage had in mind. That might have been because he didn't foresee them becoming 'personal computers' when the device in question weighed hundreds of pounds, used bleeding edge machining capabilities in it's construction, and required sophisiticated maintenance.

The replica the science museum made used 19th century tools, methods and engineering tolerances in it's construction. It has been found to be accurate, robust and reliable.

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Perhaps. I'd think there'd still be a lot of slipsticks in use, just as there was in the OTL up through the early 1970s when I was trained to use one is school. We should use the mainframe era; ~1955 to ~1970, for a guide. Businesses, industries, research facilities, and educational institutions would use the single Engines they own for statistical processing, inventory control, and other types of large scale number crunching. The processing time on an Engine would also be strictly controlled.

Occasionally the Engines would be used for 'Big Problems' just like the Crays are used now. As for 'Big Problems', we're looking for the 19th Century's version of protein folding, SETI signal processing, and the like.

Once it was realised they had a reliable tool that could be replicated without any difficulty how long would it take for it to have a major impact on the world?

Deano

[Berra]

Originally Posted by Max Sinister

The first thing people'd use them for would be complicated calculations which have to be very exact. Logarithms and such. That's what computers can do best, so that'd come before office software and such. What kind of complicated calculations did they have?

I think some kind of navigation tables where the original goal.

[The Dean]

Originally Posted by Berra

I think some kind of navigation tables where the original goal.

They could actually have had a Difference engine on a large ship, this is a replica built in the London Science Museum in 1999.




This would have been an invaluable aid to navigation and it would not have been long before it was used to predict ranges and trajectories for Naval gunfire.