Babbage Difference Engine Emulator

Emulate Babbage Difference Engine 2 at Mountain View Computer History Museum

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Program to emulate evaluation of 7th order polynomial with 31 digit accuracy for Difference Engine designed by Charles Babbage around 1830. Two versions of the engine were build in the 20th century by the London Science Museum. One, owned by Nythan Myhrvold, currently resides at the Mountain View Computer History Museum http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
The programs calculates the numbers in the each of the 8 31-digit number columns (registers) for each crank of the manually operated engine. Some background and a detailed description of how it works are included (Section 3). Just load and and run the program.

Cite As

Charles Rino (2026). Babbage Difference Engine Emulator (https://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/36300-babbage-difference-engine-emulator), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

General Information

MATLAB Release Compatibility

  • Compatible with any release

Platform Compatibility

  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Linux
Version Published Release Notes Action
1.1.0.0

The Computer History Museum was incorrectly indicated as Sunnyvale. It is located in Mountain View.

1.0.0.0