Under Glass
This display has a sample (on the right) of the kind of
mathematical tables that Babbage designed the Difference
Engine to produce. As the CHM website mentions, he was
worried that most of the books of the time had errors which
might result in damaging mistakes being made by engineers
depending on the data in the books.
On the left is a plaster mold created by the Difference
Engine embedded with the results of a run to produce the
same tables. This mold would be used to create a
metal type which could then be used to directly print books.
At no time would a human be involved in transcribing numbers,
hence removing the possibility of human error.
