Wiberg's Calculating Machine
1875 · Wiberg Machine · Work 499 of 1,871
A compact difference engine of 1875 the size of a sewing machine, its mechanism folded into a small iron frame, rows of brass figure wheels packed close together, a hand crank at the side, a small printing wheel at the front, the whole mounted on a plain wooden baseboard, the brass warm against the grey iron, the machine standing on a plain grey plinth before a flat grey background, even flat light from directly in front.
- What it was used for
- Martin Wiberg (1826-1905) built a difference engine that calculated tables and printed them. The example in the Tekniska museet in Stockholm (TEKS0018318) weighs 16.6 kilograms and measures 420 by 220 by 230 millimetres; the museum record gives 1875 as the year of completion and its purpose as computing and printing logarithms, powers and square and cube roots. With it he produced seven-place logarithms from 1 to 100,000, published in 1875 as "Tables de logarithmes calculées et imprimées au moyen de la machine à calculer". The Nordisk familjebok records that the tables appeared in German, French and English editions.
- What was new
- What this machine could do and Babbage's could not: deliver a complete table. Babbage had set out to do that, History of Information writes, but was able to publish only tiny fragments. Wiberg's machine weighed 16.6 kilograms, where the Difference Engine No. 2 built to Babbage's design weighs five tons. The barb stands in Wiberg's own encyclopaedia entry: the calculating machine appears there in a list beside railway heating apparatus, speed recorders, letter boxes and a dredge for bringing up animals and plants from the sea floor - and the only prize the entry records, at the Philadelphia world's fair of 1876, went to the dredge.
Connections
Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.
- Follows fromDifference Engine No. 11832The Tekniska museet traces Wiberg's machine back to Babbage's difference engine, proposed in 1821 and never fully realized. Wiberg himself corresponded with Babbage about the construction of his own machine, which was completed in 1875.Source: Tekniska museet / DigitaltMuseum: Räknemaskin (Martin Wiberg), Inventarnummer 021026304322