Georg Scheutz: The Man Who Beat Babbage

A Stockholm printer with no engineering training read about Charles Babbage's unfinished Difference Engine in 1834 and decided he could build one himself. Twenty years later, he did. This is the story of Georg Scheutz, his son Edvard, and the first mechanical computing machine ever sold commercially. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 0:28 Discovers Babbage's engine 0:49 Babbage's failed £17,000 project 1:13 The mathematics: finite differences 2:02 De Prony's human computing factory 2:37 Building the first prototypes 3:06 Petition denied by Sweden 3:32 Edvard Scheutz joins 4:04 The 1853 engine completed 4:28 The printing mechanism 4:47 Stockholm demonstration 5:07 London 1854: Airy's verdict 5:52 Babbage examines the machine 6:16 The Analytical Engine (never built) 6:37 Public support, private contempt 7:02 31 figures vs 15 figures 7:22 Paris Exhibition 1855 7:36 Gold medal and Order of Vasa 7:51 Sold to Dudley Observatory 8:09 The Albany conflict 8:51 Engine left unused 9:04 The General Register Office copy 9:43 William Farr and the English Life Table 10:30 Financial losses 11:00 Edvard's promotional campaign 11:32 The credit dispute 12:14 Martin Wieberg's 1875 engine 12:36 Deaths and legacy REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING Michael Lindgren, Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Müller, Charles Babbage and Georg and Edvard Scheutz, MIT Press, 1990 Doron Swade, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, Viking, 2001 William Farr, English Life Table, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1864 — full text available via HathiTrust and the Biodiversity Heritage Library Simon Schaffer, Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and the Factory System, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1994