Difference engine in Second Life

On this day in 1822, Charles Babbage proposed the use of a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society, some 186 years later and a replica of one of Babbage’s machines can be found in the  Virtual World mod Second Life:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Highlands/230/126/38

Second Life Difference Engine created by Independent State of Caledon resident Paul Churchill

Update 2024: Although ‘The Independent State of Caledon’ is still active and very much alive inside Second Life the Caledon Highlands sim is no more and I was unable to track down the difference engine in world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

“On Mr. Babbage’s new machine for calculating and printing mathematical and astronomical tables…”

Difference Engine - Caledon Highlands

Some 186 years later and a replica of one of Babbage’s machines can be found in a Virtual World:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Highlands/230/126/38

Second Life Difference Engine created by Independent State of Caledon resident Paul Churchill

Update 2024: Although ‘The Independent State of Caledon’ is still active and very much alive inside Second Life the Caledon Highlands sim is no more and I was unable to track down the difference engine in world.

see also: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Mr._Babbage%27s_new_machine_for_calculating_and_printing_mathematical_and_astronomical_tables


Other Second Life related pages can be found here


First Steps in Second Life

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/975/2ndlifeb3np.jpg

Ive been taking my first steps in Second Life…

This is me in Second Life
A hammock is a great place to relax….
and for those country roads I also bought a car.

Update 2022:

These pictures look so dated because at the time my computer was a snail and Second Life has developed a lot – but to be honest it never really lived up to its potential. The Achilles heel of Second Life is that it is not scalable and the handover between one virtual square of 256 x 256 meters is not smooth.

On a positive note glad to see that Meta and Alphabet (Facepage and Goggle) tried meta verses and failed. Google had the good grace to try early and quit early.

Second Life is still free to play – although they no longer pay you to be there – I got in early enough to have that grandfathered into my account .

Download it here:

https://secondlife.com