Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/465

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DIFFERENCE ENGINE.
449

ferred upon the country by the improvements he introduced is as yet scarcely sufficiently estimated.

These principles were published afterwards in the "Economy of Manufactures."—See First Edition, 8th June, 1832; Second Edition, 22nd November, 1832. See chap. on the "Influence of Verification on Price," p. 134, and "Conveyance of Letters," p. 273.


Submarine Navigation.

Of this it is not necessary to do more than mention the title and refer for the detail to the chapter on Experience by Water: and also to the article Diving Bell in the "Encyclopædia Metropolitana."

I have only to add my opinion that in open inverted vessels it may probably be found, under certain circumstances, of important use.


Difference Engine.

Enough has already been said about that unfortunate discovery in the previous part of this volume. The first and great cause of its discontinuance was the inordinately extravagant demands of the person whom I had employed to construct it for the Government. Even this might, perhaps, by great exertions and sacrifices, have been surmounted. There is, however, a limit beyond which human endurance cannot go. If I survive some few years longer, the Analytical Engine will exist, and its works will afterwards be spread over the world. If it is the will of that Being, who gave me the endowments which led to that discovery, that I should not survive to complete my work, I bow to that decision with intense gratitude for those gifts: conscious that through life I have never hesitated to make the

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