Customer Reviews

Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Müller, Charles Babbage, and Georg and Edvard Sheutz (History of Computing)

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The story of Georg and Edvard Scheutz is a well written and entertaining scientific book. A young schoolboy, Edvard Scheutz, succeeds in his kitchen to construct a difference engine that works better then that of the famous Charles Babbage. The story of how father and son struggle together to make their difference engine a profitable invention is incredibly interesteting both in a technical and economical aspect but also in a social aspect. Interesting is of course also why a genious invention like theirs becomes such a financial failure.
This is a book to read both for those who have a general interest in history of techology and for those who have a particular interest in swedish history and inventors.

So it wasn't just Babbage. He is now belatedly well known. Considered to have built the first computer. Though it was never fully functional. But what Lindgren has uncovered is that around the same time, Muller and the Sheutzs in Sweden were trying roughly the same approach, independently of Babbage.

Both sides hit upon the idea of replacing a human with automated machinery, in a programmable fashion. The Swedes also seemed to have within themselves the equivalent talent of Ada Lovelace, in being able to devise software.

But both groups failed within their lifetimes. A bridge too far. At best, their efforts were seen as intellectual curiosities by their contemporaries. If anything, this research by Lindgren reinforces a common conclusion about Babbage's work. The Swedes' efforts can be seen roughly as a parallel experiment to Babbage. His failure is considered by us [20th-21st centuries] to be due to the primitive technology that he had to start with. The failure of the Swedes to commercialise their work suggests that it wasn't Babbage's fault that he failed. Or theirs that they failed.

It would be 90 years later, before economically viable machines could be made.