The Science Museum in London is to the Tech Museum in San Jose as a great wine collection is to a selection of California cabernets and chardonnays from a single decade — a much more complete and satisfying way to spend some time.
The Science Museum is a tour of humanitys’ unceasing improvements, and what has spun off from them. The mind is at work in this place.
Among the exhibits is one that anyone interested in computing should see, an area devoted to Charles Babbage and his pathbreaking work on what he called a “difference engine,” applying machinery to calculation. Here’s a photo of Babbage’s unfinished Difference Engine No. 1, which is in the Science Museum.
Weekend Reading