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nydus/The calculating enginePublic

This article examines the development and application of Charles Babbage’s calculating engine for the production of mathematical and astronomical tables. It compiles various scientific papers, reports, and addresses documenting the invention and its impact on the field of mathematics.

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The calculating engine

18' 3", read cos. 14° 18' 2".'

Here, however, confusion is worse confounded; for a new error, not before existing, and of much greater magnitude, is introduced! It will be necessary, in the Nautical Almanac for 1836, (that for 1835 is already published,) to introduce the following:

ERRATUM of the ERRATUM of the ERRATA of TAYLOR's Logarithms. For cos. 4° 18' 3", read cos. 14° 18' 3".

If proof were wanted to establish incontrovertibly the utter impracticability of precluding numerical errors in works of this nature, we should find it in this succession of error upon error, produced, in spite of the universally acknowledged accuracy and assiduity of the persons at present employed in the construction and management of the Nautical Almanac. It is only by the mechanical fabrication of tables that such errors can be rendered impossible.

On examining this list with attention, we have been particularly struck with the circumstances in which these errors appear to have originated. It is a remarkable fact, that of the above nineteen errors, eighteen have arisen from mistakes in carrying. Errors 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, have arisen from a carriage being neglected; and errors 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 18, from a carriage being made where none should take place. In four cases, namely, errors 8, 9, 10, and 16, this has caused two figures to be wrong. The only error of the nineteen which appears to have been a press error is the second; which has evidently arisen from the type 9 being accidentally inverted, and thus becoming a 6. This may have originated with the compositor, but more probably it took place in the press-work;

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