Real world tech question: Building the Analytical Engine

Would it be possible to build Babbage's Difference Engine or Analytical Engine in the mid 1870's with existing manufacturing technology. Specifically, as a government project, with money available even if it will never turn a profit. And if built, how much ongoing repair and maintenance would the beastie need to KEEP working? Obviously the Analytical Engine is more complex, so assume that both are going to be built if practical. The US Government wants it badly enough that money WILL be forthcoming--and if a new railroad or ironclad needs to be sacrificed, so be it.

How much time would each machine spend working, as opposed to being maintained and repaired?
 
I don't think the high-end metals you need are invented yet. It requires some very high precision crafting that really wasn't around in the 1870's...
 
Building the tools...

If the machines couldn't be built (even at ridiculous costs) then how long to build the tools to build the machine? We're talking Congress saying, "Find a way" type urgency, we need these machines. I'm assuming that it's expensive, and high maintenance, and very much non-portable.
 
May I ask what the vital need is for? Unless it is military, there were VERY few 'government run' projects back then. Even the railroads and canals (the wonders of the age, rightly so) were done by private companies.
 
Military

I'm restarting an A/H project. https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=211479&highlight=Reach+skies In 1876, a large meteorite strikes Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. The resulting crater is almost a mile across, and all the other natural results of a 3.5 megaton ground burst are seen and felt. Even though the area is lightly populated then, it's a tourist area even in the 1870s, with the railroads.

There is a demand for a better way to track asteroid orbits as they're discovered, lest something like this happen again. A timeline like this can go in many directions; I'm working on the assumption that there's a strong desire to find the answers, and (at least for a while) money devoted to it.
 
Would not telescopes and such be a better investment? It seems that you have to observe them before you can calculate orbits...
 
I don't think the high-end metals you need are invented yet. It requires some very high precision crafting that really wasn't around in the 1870's...

Really? According to Wikipedia,
In 1991, the London Science Museum built a complete and working specimen of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, a design that incorporated refinements Babbage discovered during the development of the Analytical Engine. This machine was built using materials and engineering tolerances that would have been available to Babbage, quelling the suggestion that Babbage's designs could not have been produced using the manufacturing technology of his time.
It would have been expensive, for sure, but perhaps possible...
 
Really? According to Wikipedia,

It would have been expensive, for sure, but perhaps possible...

It is one thing to build it in 1991. Even if they only used 'time period' machines and tooling, the knowledge we have now to solve the problem is immensely more and can't be removed from the equation.
 
It is one thing to build it in 1991. Even if they only used 'time period' machines and tooling, the knowledge we have now to solve the problem is immensely more and can't be removed from the equation.

But that is not what you said. You said that new metals needed to be invented and high precision crafting was needed to build the machine. But they built a similar (though smaller) device without those new metals or high precision crafting. Hence, those were not needed to build the Analytical Engine.
 
But that is not what you said. You said that new metals needed to be invented and high precision crafting was needed to build the machine. But they built a similar (though smaller) device without those new metals or high precision crafting. Hence, those were not needed to build the Analytical Engine.

Maybe I have no idea what I am talking about and you should listen to Workable Goblin....
 
Comprehensive plan

The engines are only part of a comprehensive plan. An increase in the number of high quality telescopes, and a plan to coordinate research and share observations from different locations is also in the works. In short, this is funded by the US Government, the State Of New Hampshire, and various universities. (And some are finding it politically useful to boost defense spending in a way that the isolationists can't fault...)
 
Maybe I have no idea what I am talking about and you should listen to Workable Goblin....

At any rate, I agree that I might not have been realistically possible to build it, hence my comment that it might "perhaps" be possible. But my understanding is that in a technical sense, it was possible. A good modern-day comparison might be, say, a Mars mission. Realistically, that's not going to happen anytime particularly soon, even though in a technical sense we could probably do it. The Analytical Engine is probably similar; it might have been theoretically possible for them to build it, but perhaps not very likely.

Certainly I don't think it would happen in NHBL's scenario; humans are actually reasonably competent at working out orbits (though computers help). The main thing is to detect the asteroids in the first place, as you said, so they would probably work on building a lot of observatories and putting people in them to find asteroids. They might invent the blink comparator earlier...that would be a lot easier than the Analytical Engine.
 
High Volume computing...

The Blink Comparator will almost definately come forth soon, as asteroid searching becomes more important in the minds of some. I'll have to contemplate the Difference Engine--IMVHO, if someone in the USA comes across Babbage's work, I'd expect it to be at least considered. In this pre-internet day, how likely is someone involved in the aseroid search program in the USA to know of Babbage's proposed machine?
 
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