"Babbage's Calculating Engine" IN Volume I Number II of The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge for October, 1834...Each number illustrated with numerous engravings, by the Boston Bewick Company.
Boston, Massachusetts: Freeman Hunt for the Boston Bewick Company 1834. First Edition. [49]-96 pages. 8 x 12 inches. Original string bound light pink/violet (?) printed wrappers, contained in make-do brown paper covers. "Sold by Russell, Odiorne, & Metcalf, H. N. Bent, and J. H. Tibbetts, and by the Principal Booksellers, throughout the United States. Two dollars a year - payable in advance." Near Fine. Wraps. [26734]
Contains on pages 88-96 a description of Babbage's Calculating Engine along with five large illustrated figures, tables, and other information about the device:
"Such is a very rapid and general outline of this machinery. Its wonders, however, are still greater in its details than even in its broader features. Although we despair of doing it justice by any description which can be attempted here, yet we should not fulfil the duty we owe to our readers, if we did not call their attention at least to a few of the instances of consummate skill which are scattered, with a prodigality characteristic of the highest order of inventive genius, throughout this astonishing mechanism ; and which instances will be found enumerated in the Edinburgh Review, to be published as above."
While the previous quotation suggests that this article predates the one in the Edinburgh Review, that is not the case. The large article by Lardner was published in the Edinburgh Review in the April-July 1934 period (and here in October). Nonetheless, it is an early and visually interesting account of Babbage's Calculating Engine.
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