Photo post: 1853 Close-up of Babbage’s difference engine, a 19th-century early mechanical computer. This was an earlier version of the analytic engine that Ada Lovelace from our previous posts programmed. Later versions of these massive machines were used to compute, among other things, error-free navigation tables. There is thus a clear line between early computers and our earlier photos on astrolabe, Gutenberg, printing, and the conquistadors. Inexpensive navigational tables were a killer app for the early printing presses. It is not coincidental that the voyages of discovery happened soon after the invention of inexpensive printing. Another chapter in the of story of data.
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