News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on It's often said that the Analytical Engine was before its time. Parent comment

Re:It's often said that the Analytical Engine was before its... by fentonc on Wednesday February 16, 2022 @09:42PM (#30368945)
I believe his plans did include a general shift function - what he referred to as “stepping” up/down was just shifting by a digit
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:It's often said that the Analytical Engine was before its... by Animats on Wednesday February 16, 2022 @10:25PM (#30369202)
Right. There's some question as to whether that was seen as a scaling operation or just as part of multiply or divide.[1]

If you can scale into a reasonable range for each data type, you don't need 50 digits. But that's an abstraction which came decades after Babbage.

[1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/cards.html

[ Parent | on HN ]