ERROR UPON ERROR.
The great inducement to Mr. Babbage, some years since, to attempt the construction of a machine by which astronomical tables could be calculated and even printed by mechanical means, and with entire accuracy, was the errors in the requisite tables. Nineteen such errors, in point of fact, were discovered in an edition of Taylor’s Logarithms printed in 1796; some of which might have led to the most dangerous results in calculating a ship’s place. These nineteen errors (of which one only was an error of the press) were pointed out in the Nautical Almanac for 1832. In one of these errata, the seat of the error was stated to be in cosine of 14° 18′ 3″. Subsequent examination showed that there was an error of one second in this correction, and accordingly, in the Nautical Almanac of the next year a new correction was necessary. But in making the new correction of one second, a new error was committed of ten degrees, making it still necessary, in some future edition of the Nautical Almanac, to insert an erratum in an erratum of the errata in Taylor’s Logarithms.—Edinburgh Review, vol. 59.