9-Foot-Tall Adding Machine Rocks Silicon Valley

A real-life version of Charles Babbage‘s Difference Engine has come to Silicon Valley, says CNet.

Babbage, you may recall, was the 19th-century inventor who designed a complicated hand-cranked gadget that is often called the very first computer. Babbage never actually built the Difference Engine, as he called it, because (depending on who’s telling the story) he didn’t have the money, Victorian mechanics weren’t up to the task, or because he kept coming up with refinements and starting all over again.

The UK Science Museum built a working model in 2002: nine feet high, five tons in weight, and with 8000 moving parts. That’s where wealthy techie Nathan Myhrvold saw it and decided he wanted one of his own for his home in Seattle. So he commissioned this copy.

Before it gets shipped to the Northwest, it’s being shown for six months at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California (just down the street from Google HQ).

From the Who2 blog:

More from Who2

• Who Was Born on My Birthday?
• Lists of Famous People