One of the joys of having an extensive twitter stream is the unexpected titbits that it throws up from time to time. Recently Lee Jackson[1] (@VictorianLondon) posted this small newspaper cutting from The Times for the 2nd May 1862.
This is an excerpt from an account of the 1862 Great London Exposition not to be confused with the more famous Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. This Exposition was held in a building especially constructed for the purpose in South Kensington, where the Natural History Museum now stands.
Panoramic view of the International Exhibition of 1862 in South Kensington, London
Source: Wikimedia Commons
A twenty-one acre construction designed by Captain Francis Fowke (1823–1865) of the Royal Engineers, it was supposed to be a permanent structure but when parliament refused to buy the building after the Exposition closed it was demolished and the materials used to build Alexandra Palace. The building cost £300,000 paid for out the profits of the 1851 Exhibition. Fowke also produced the original plans for the Natural History Museum but died before they could be realised. His plans were modified by Alfred Waterhouse, the new architect, when the museum was finally constructed in 1870.
Francis Fowke (1823-1865)
Source: Victoria & Albert Museum
The main aim of the Exposition, which ran from 1 May to 15 November attracting over six million visitors, was to present the latest technological advances of the industrial revolution, hence the presence an engine of Charles Babbage as described in the cutting. However the author of the piece has got his facts wonderfully mixed up.
The author introduces Charles Babbage by way of his notorious disputes with the street musicians of London for which he was better known than for his mathematical and technical achievements and which I blogged about several years ago. We then get told that the Exposition is displaying “Mr Babbage’s great calculating machine, which will work quadrations and calculate logarithms up to seven places of decimals.” All well and good so far but then he goes on, “It was the account of this invention written by the late Lady Lovelace – Lord Byron’s daughter –…” Anybody cognisant with the calculating engines designed by Charles Babbage will have immediately realised that the reporter can’t tell his Difference Engines from his Analytical Engines.
The calculating machine capable of calculating logarithms to seven places of decimals, of which a demonstration module was indeed displayed at the 1862 Exposition, was Babbage’s Difference Engine. The computer described by Lady Lovelace in her notorious memoire from 1842 was Babbage’s Analytical Engine of which he only constructed a model in 1871, nine years after the Exposition. This brings us to Messrs Scheutz of Stockholm.
Difference Engine No. 1, portion,1832
Source: Science Museum London
Analytical Engine, experimental model, 1871
Source: Science Museum London
Per Georg Scheutz (1785-1873) was a Swedish lawyer and inventor, who invented the Scheutzian calculation engine in 1837 based on the design of Babbage’s Difference Engine.
Per Georg Schutz
Source: Wikimedia Commons
This was constructed by his son Edvard and finished in 1843. An improved model was created in 1853 and displayed at the World Fair in Paris in 1855. This machine was bought by the British Government in 1859 and was in fact displayed at the 1862 Exposition but had apparently been removed by the time the Time’s reporter paid his visit to South Kensington. Scheutz’s machine gives a lie to those who claim that Babbage’s Difference Engine was never realised. Scheutz constructed a third machine in 1860, which was sold to the American Government.
The third Difference engine (Scheutz No. 2) built by Per Georg Scheutz, Edvard Scheutz and Bryan Donkin
Source: Science Museum London
It would seem that journalist screwing up their accounts of scientific and technological advances has a long history.
[1] You should read his excellent Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, Yale University Press, Reprint 2015
