As you might expect from its name, the "Difference Engine" is a strangely difficult object to describe. You might start by imagining the side of a large crib with uprights ringed by small metal wheels ...

A numerical table is a tool designed to save the time and labor of those engaged in computing work. The oldest tables which are preserved, were compiled in Babylon in the period 1800-1500 B.C. They ...

Englishman Charles Babbage (1791–1871), an eccentric, ingenious mathematician, decided that existing tables of computations included far too many errors: the day's textbooks came with errata sheets ...

"The machine works exactly as Babbage intended. There's not a single logical design flaw in the entire design," says its builder Doron Swade. And 248 gears of iron, brass and steel. The first digital ...

Conventional gaming wisdom holds that World of Warcraft is such a lean, mean GPU-conserving machine that it will run on everything from a 386 to a scientific calculator from the early 1970s. Rumor has ...