While We're on the Subject...
Seeing as we've launched an unplanned mini blogwave on the subject of push prizes over the past few days, this is an excellent time to remind our readers that not all such prizes are about space or mechanical computers or flying cars. The Methuselah Mouse Prize is now over $3.2 million. In the words of the prize organizers:
For the price of a cup of coffee a day you can join a select group of visionaries who are standing shoulder to shoulder as the first vanguard in the real war on aging.
Now who wouldn't want to be a part of that? Maybe you should check them out before sending me your $20 towards the flying car prize.
Meanwhile, Speculist UK correspondent Robert Hinkley directs us towards some possible entries for our suggested push prize for achievements in mechanical computing. Check out this difference engine made from a Mechano set (what we used to call an "erector set" back in the dark ages). Here's an even more impressive one.
Rob reports:
The Science Museum in London built a full size Difference Engine from the original drawings. They even gave it some sums to do, cranked the handle and it worked. I saw it on a visit in 1998: I've never seen so many cogs and shiny brass levers in one place before.
Though Babbage's original project failed it had valuable spin-offs - at least according to some of the literature at the exhibit. The need to mass produce so many intricate parts to high tolerances meant that much of the effort of Babbage's project went into developing new and improved tooling and manufacturing technologies.
This echoes a point Stephen made about push prizes in the new edition of FFR -- even when no one wins the prize, the fact that people have entered and made an effort leads to developments that otherwise might not have happened.
Rob continues, quoting some material from the Science Museum in London:
To explore the thesis that the limitation of Victorian engineering was a contributory factor in Babbage's failure to complete any of his machines the Science Museum set about constructing Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 in 1985. Before the engine could be constructed the original design drawings were redrawn and expanded to provide the engineering detail needed for modern manufacture. In addition a small trial piece was built to verify the original addition mechanism and the mechanism for carrying tens.
The calculating section of Difference Engine No. 2, has 4,000 moving parts (excluding the printing mechanism) and weighs 2.6 tonnes. It is seven feet high, eleven feet long and eighteen inches in depth and built to original designs using materials closely matching those available to Babbage. Modern techniques were used in the manufacture of repeat parts but care was taken to restrict limits of precision to those achievable by Babbage.
Difference Engine No. 2 was the first full sized Babbage calculating engine to be completed. It was made as a research machine for display at the 1991 exhibition commemorating the bicentennial year of Babbage's birth.
How interesting that we can now make with children's toys what was beyond the limits of the manufacturing infrastructure of less than two centuries ago.
Of course, the end game of the mechanical computer prize would not be to reproduce what Babbage did in an exciting new medium like Lincoln Logs (cool as that might be) but rather to tak steps towards nanomechanical computers.
UPDATE FROM STEPHEN: A Babbage spin-off is also a good example of "Spock's chessboard" in action - back when the world was on the first squares.