Lego Difference Engine Built by Adam Carol
Difference Engines were a prelude to the modern calculator and computer. If one had actually been completed and operational back in the early 19th century, computers as we know them might have evolved in a radically different direction.
From Adam Carol's website:
How Does a Difference Engine Compute?
A Difference Engine uses Newton's method of differences to evaluate a polynomial for successive values of x; 1, 2, 3, etc. Computing the next entry in a table can be significantly easier than computing an arbitrary entry of the table.
Babbage's Partially Assembled Difference Engine
(click the pic to see a larger version on Wikipedia; by Andrew Dunn)
[Also posted on Analog Medium]
Links to the Lego Difference Engine: Boing-Boing, Gizmodo, TechEBlog
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