The Computer History Museum Debuts Charles Babbage's Difference
Engine No. 2, On Display for the First Time in North America See
the Five-Ton Computing Engine Come to Life, Starting May 10,
2008 Mountain View, Calif.—May 5, 2008— The Computer History
Museum, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, today announced
that it is opening an exhibit on May 10, 2008 to showcase
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2, one of the earliest
designs for an automatic computing engine. Constructed over the
past three and a half years in London, weighing five tons, with
8,000 parts, the Engine was commissioned by Nathan Myhrvold, CEO
of Intellectual Ventures and former CTO of Microsoft. It will be
on display for the first time in North America for one year.
Visitors to the Museum will have the unprecedented opportunity
to see and hear the mechanical Engine working – a stunning
display of Victorian mechanics. “Babbage himself failed to build
a complete calculating Engine and through it, to convey to his
world a vision of a