956 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines ofJohann Muller, Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz. By Michael Lindgren. Trans, by Craig G. McKay. Linkoping: Universitet i Linkoping, 1987. Pp. 415; il lustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. Skr 200.00 + Skr 15.00 handling. Difference engine is, ofcourse, a familiar term to anyone acquainted with the life and times of Charles Babbage, the famed 19th-century British mathematician, philosopher, economist, and inventor. It usu ally denotes a machine capable of calculating numerical tables by a method of successive additions. In the case of Babbage, his concept of a difference engine was only partly realized, but it nevertheless led him to the invention of the analytical engine, the hrst known design of a programmable digital calculator. Where Charles Babbage failed—and before him the German en gineer Johann Muller—others succeeded: the Swedes Georg and Ed vard Scheutz completed their hrst difference engine in 1843, and two more were to follow. Uta C. Merzbach has described the achievements of this remarkable father-and-son team in her pioneering study Georg Scheutz and the First Printing Calculator (Washington, D.C., 1977). Now Michael Lindgren, currently at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, tells us the whole story of Scheutz Jr. and Sr., Babbage, and Muller, and their inventions. His work is based almost exclusively on original sources, many of them hitherto unused, and on the difference engines themselves, one of which was redis covered by the author after it lay nearly 100 years unnoticed in a Stockholm depository. Lindgren opens his study with a short account of mathematical tables before introducing Babbage and Muller. By the end of 1821, Babbage arrived at the idea of a machine for calculating and printing tables, and in June 1822 a small prototype (without a printing unit) was finished. With the help of a government grant, the building of a larger “Difference Engine No. 1” could start in 1823. It was halted ten years later, with only a fraction of the calculating unit completed (it is now in the Science Museum, London). In 1786 Muller published a booklet describing his desk calculator and a hypothetical machine for the same purpose as Babbage’s—the calculation and printing of tables. Did the Englishman get his ideas from Muller? That remains unsolved. Lindgren closes the hrst part of Glory and Failure with a look at the difference method, the theoretical basis of the engines, and the design of Babbage’s big machine. The second and main part of the book is devoted to father and son Scheutz. Lindgren follows the career of Pehr Georg Scheutz, auditor, journalist, printer, translator, publisher, and self-taught engineer. Scheutz knew of the “Difference Engine No. 1” by November 1833, thanks to extensive reading of foreign journals, but it was young Edvard Scheutz who dared to build a machine along Babbage’s lines, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 957 starting in 1837. In cooperation with his father, at home and without any government money, he completed it six years later, the first print ing calculator in the history of computing. It can be seen today in the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm. After thoroughly analyzing the technical intricacies of this engine, Lindgren describes the political maneuvering that made possible the building of the second Scheutz engine, finished in 1853, and the marketing strategy leading to its sale to the United States in 1857. It was sporadically used by the Dudley Observatory, Albany, N.Y., and is now in the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. A third engine was made in England by Bryan Donkin & Co. for the General Register Office; today it stands in the Science Museum. Lindgren closes his study with an analysis: here he compares the Babbage and Scheutz machines and discusses the technological failure of the Englishman and the commercial hardship of the Swedes. The book contains a number of small errors that should be elimi nated in future editions. One correction has to be made: it is doubtful that Babbage was influenced by Muller’s ideas. In his booklet, the German engineer stressed the usefulness of...