Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/172

These had been made at my own expense, and were finished by myself and my eldest son, Mr. B. Herschel Babbage, now resident in South Australia.

4. A complete set of the drawings of the Difference Engine No. 2, for calculating and printing tables, with seven orders of differences, and thirty places of figures. Finished in 1849. 5. A complete set of the Notations necessary for the explanation and demonstration of Difference Engine No. 2, finished in 1849.

These drawings and notations would have required for their exhibition about seven or eight hundred square feet of wall. My letter to Mr. Gravatt was forwarded to the Commissioners with his own application for space to exhibit them. The Commissioners declined this offer; yet during the first six weeks of the Exhibition there was at a short distance from the Difference Engine an empty space of wall large enough for the greater part of these instructive diagrams. This portion of wall was afterwards filled up by a vast oil-cloth. Other large portions of wall, to the amount of thousands of square feet, were given up to other oil-cloths, and to numberless carpets. It is evident the Royal Commissioners were much better qualified to judge of furniture for the feet than of furniture for the head.

I was myself frequently asked why I did not employ a person to explain the Difference Engine. In reply to some of my friends, I inquired whether, when they purchased a carriage, they expected the builder to pay the wages of their coachman.

But my greatest difficulty was with foreigners; no explanation I could devise, and I tried many, appeared at all