Difference Engine
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
A Difference Engine is a Mechanical Calculator that ...
- See: Charles Babbage, Mechanical Calculator, Polynomial, Divided Differences, Mathematical Function, Logarithm, Trigonometric Functions, Taylor Series, Mathematical Table, Human Computer.
References
2017
- (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine Retrieved:2017-10-28.
- A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. The name derives from the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial coefficients. Most mathematical functions commonly used by engineers, scientists and navigators, including logarithmic and trigonometric functions, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful tables of numbers.
The historical difficulty in producing error-free tables by teams of mathematicians and human "computers" spurred Charles Babbage's desire to build a mechanism to automate the process.
- A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. The name derives from the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial coefficients. Most mathematical functions commonly used by engineers, scientists and navigators, including logarithmic and trigonometric functions, can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful tables of numbers.