The Origins of Cyberspace collection described as lots 1-255 will first be offered as a single lot, subject to a reserve price. If this price is not reached, the collection will be immediately offered as individual lots as described in the catalogue as lots 1-255.
GRANT, George Barnard (1849-1917). "On a new difference engine." In The American Journal of Science and Arts 2 (1871): 113-17.
Details
GRANT, George Barnard (1849-1917). "On a new difference engine." In The American Journal of Science and Arts 2 (1871): 113-17.
4o. Original gray printed wrappers; boxed.
FIRST EDITION. Grant was one of the few Americans to make a significant contribution to mechanical computation prior to the end of the nineteenth century. He first became interested in the possibility of mechanical calculation while attending the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, where he had to wrestle with the problem of computing scientific tables by hand. Grant's first attempts to build a calculating machine met with failure, but after learning of Babbage's and Scheutz's machines he began working on his own design for a difference engine, which he completed with the encouragement and assistance of several distinguished American scientists, including Wolcott Gibbs, Harvard's Rumford Professor of Chemistry, and John Batchelder, the man in charge of operating the Dudley Observatory's Scheutz machine. The present paper, written while Grant was still a student at Harvard, contains his description of his machine. OOC 309.
[With:] GRANT. "A new calculating machine." In The American Journal of Science and Arts 8 (1874): 277-84. 4o. Original gray printed wrappers. After publishing his difference engine paper, Grant continued working on designs for desk calculators, and had already obtained two calculating machine patents by the time of his graduation from Harvard in 1873 (Merzbach 1977, 35). Randell 1982a, 471. OOC 310.
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FIRST EDITION. Grant was one of the few Americans to make a significant contribution to mechanical computation prior to the end of the nineteenth century. He first became interested in the possibility of mechanical calculation while attending the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, where he had to wrestle with the problem of computing scientific tables by hand. Grant's first attempts to build a calculating machine met with failure, but after learning of Babbage's and Scheutz's machines he began working on his own design for a difference engine, which he completed with the encouragement and assistance of several distinguished American scientists, including Wolcott Gibbs, Harvard's Rumford Professor of Chemistry, and John Batchelder, the man in charge of operating the Dudley Observatory's Scheutz machine. The present paper, written while Grant was still a student at Harvard, contains his description of his machine. OOC 309.
[With:] GRANT. "A new calculating machine." In The American Journal of Science and Arts 8 (1874): 277-84. 4
Further details
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