“Whose fault is this? But tallow, toys, and sweetmeats evidently stand high in the estimation of Her Majesty’s Commissioners.”—The Times, August 13, 1862.
Mr. Gravatt suggests to King’s College the exhibition of the Difference Engine No. 1, and offers to superintend its Transmission and Return — Place allotted to it most unfit — Not Exhibited in 1851 — Its Loan refused to New York — Refused to the Dublin Exhibition in 1847 — Not sent to the great French Exhibition in 1855 — Its Exhibition in 1862 entirely due to Mr. Gravatt — Space for its Drawings refused — The Payment of Six Shillings a Day for a competent person to explain it refused by the Commissioners — Copy of Swedish Difference Engine made by English Workmen not exhibited — Loan of various other Calculating Machines offered — Anecdote of Count Strzelecki’s — The Royal Commissioners’ elaborate taste for Children’s Toys — A plan for making such Exhibitions profitable — Extravagance of the Commissioners to their favourite — Contrast between his Treatment and that of Industrious Workmen — The Inventor of the Difference Engine publicly insulted by his Countrymen in the Exhibition of 1862.
Circumstances connected with the Exhibition of the Difference Engine No. 1 in the International Exhibition of 1862.
WHEN the construction of the Difference Engine No. 1 was abandoned by the Government in 1842, I was consulted respecting the place in which it should be deposited. Well aware of the unrivalled perfection of its workmanship, and {148} conscious that it formed the first great step towards reducing the whole science of number to the absolute control of mechanism, I wished it to be placed wherever the greatest number of persons could see it daily.
〈ENGINE No. 1 IN KING’S COLLEGE.〉
With this view, I advised that it should be placed in one of the much-frequented rooms of the British Museum. Another locality was, however, assigned to it, and it was confided by the Government to the care of King’s College, Somerset House. It remained in safe custody within its glass case in the Museum of that body for twenty years. It is remarkable that during that long period no person should have studied its structure, and, by explaining its nature and use, have acquired an amount of celebrity which the singularity of that knowledge would undoubtedly have produced.
The College authorities did justice to their charge. They put it in the place of honour, in the centre of their Museum, and would, no doubt have given facilities to any of their members or to other persons who might have wished to study it.
〈THE GOVERNMENT IGNORE IT.〉
But the system quietly pursued by the Government, of ignoring the existence of the Difference Engine and its inventor doubtlessly exercised its deadening influence[27] on those who were inclined, by taste or acquirements, to take such a course. {149}