The Dawn of Innovation by Charles R. Morris

gear is to be found before it is finally fixed. So the timing of hundreds of parts had to be determined by meticulous trial and error. 35
    The team did not quite make their schedule. They had preannounced a test case, computing a table of the digits 1 through 80 raised to the seventh power. The machine readily made the calculations but repeatedly failed to get through the entire list before something jammed. Since the test case had been preannounced, they feared that their miss would make the whole project look like a failure. After shamefacedly explaining their shortfall at a crowded press conference, they started the engine and discovered, happily, that no one cared about their test. Swade writes that the crank handle was turned, and “the rhythmic clanking and the shifting array of bronze wheels begins. The helical carry mechanisms perform their rippling dance. There are murmurs as the motions enthral and seduce. The visual spectacle of the engine works its magic. As a static exhibit, the engine is a superb piece of engineering sculpture. As a working machine, even partially working, it is arresting.... The Engine has cast its spell, and later that day the coverage is ungrudgingly triumphalist.” 36 Within some weeks, the DE2 was flawlessly executing the test exercise over and over again. All in all, the exercise was a stupendous success and a classic example of the contributions to history and science of the best science museums.
    The experience may also suggest that the various authorities who declined to provide Babbage the open-ended support he had demanded made the right decision. In ten years of off-and-on work on the DE1, Clement completed some 12,000 gears, about half the required total. Swade and his subcontractors produced 4,000 such parts in just six months using a large number of subcontractors in pattern making, gear cutting, case hardening,
and many other subtrades. Gears were cut and parts were shaped with CNC (computerized numerical control) machines that can machine hundreds or thousands of parts to precise specifications with great consistency. At the level of precision that Clement was working to—2/1,000 of an inch, according to Swade’s sample—it would have been very difficult for him to replicate the museum team’s accomplishment. In 1830s the technology of precise working drawings and reliable dimensioning tools was still in its infancy. Identical parts were made so by laboriously fitting them to other parts. Drift away from uniformity would have been hard to avoid. And recall the problems Swade’s team had in placing and orienting all the different parts, despite the high precision of CNC machining. It would have been much harder in Babbage’s day. Even with the best of will and resources, it is easy to imagine the project collapsing in ignominious failure with finger-pointing and rancor on all sides. q
    An intellectual achievement as monumental as the Analytical Engine is its own justification, and Babbage deserves a high place in history for it. But like Whitworth’s millionth-of-an-inch measuring machine, it was another beautiful British dead end. Swade notes that Babbage never considered the cost-benefit aspect of his great projects, assuming that government officials would be as drawn as he was to “ingenuity, intricacy, mastery of mechanism, and the seductive appeal of control over number.” 37
    Babbage was undoubtedly at the extreme end of other-worldliness, but he had a large and responsive audience. A book he published in 1833, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturing , 38 has an arid, academic tone; the first third is an exhaustive classification of machines as those for “Accumulating Power,” “Regulating Power,” “Extending the Time of Action
of Forces,” and much else in that vein. Yet the first printing of 3,000 copies was sold out within a few weeks, and there were two more editions the next year. (The first