An aside: Piers Plummer's Difference Engine

An absolutely extraordinary partial model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #2 was built in 2017 by Piers Plummer at Royal Holloway, University of London. You can see it in action here:

Amazing!

It is a simplified version of the DE with 4 columns of 6 digits each, opened out more than the original design for better visibility. It is made of 3D-printed and painted nylon, laser-cut steel, and other standard modern parts. "And of course, it had to be powered by steam!"

In order to learn from their detailed design, and to see that it gets the public exposure and preservation that it deserves, I asked for and received permission to make the CAD files available. They are now on GitHub here:
https://github.com/LenShustek/AnalyticalEngine/tree/main/Piers_Plummer_DE

The design files were made with Solidworks. For those of without access to that CAD software, I created and included JPG images of each of the parts and assemblies.

This was a project with the Centre for Software Language Engineering at the Computer Science Department of Royal Holloway, University of London, funded by The Leverhulme Foundation with support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The participants in the project were:

•    Dr. Doron Swade
•    Prof Adrian Johnstone
•    Prof Elizabeth Scott
•    Dr. Piers Plummer

http://babbage.csle.cs.rhul.ac.uk

Well done!