Comeuppance
When I think steampunk, I don't think handcranks and printed tables. No amount of polished brass and cogs can make printed tables steampunk.

Comeuppance
(Also, 5 for how damned neat this is.)

StanleyPain
I think by default the difference engine is considered steampunk because William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a book about it together and they could pretty much write a book about a toaster and have toasters become the name-dropped, steampunk cyber whatever thing for the next 10 years.

That aside, it's an amazing machine.

Comeuppance
Toasters make delicious food easier, ergo they are acceptable in any culture of genre.

I cannot spread peanut butter on a printed table and rediscover joy.

Comeuppance
culture or**

Billy the Poet
Steampunk is played. The handcrank is tomorrow's internal-combustion engine. Slavepunk forever.

fluffy
I refuse to call this "steampunk" on the grounds that it's an actual Victorian invention, not a modern invention that some douchenozzle hotglued some copper-plated gears to.

MerryMisanthrope
Actually, I'm pretty sure the book mentioned above was the origin of the "steampunk" sub-sub-genre, and the brass douchenozzles are the later imitators ...

Not that that demeans the general spirit of your comment, though.

Cap'n Profan!ty
sorry, I mean "based on the Science Museum's machine."

ChocFullOfFunk
I mean, I think the idea is that you can approximate a logarithm or whatever with a Taylor expansion of finite order, so this can certainly do that.

dr_rock
...engine.

dancingshadow
How polynomial get solved?

Comrade Admiral
they need to way with instain table that eliminatt human erorr oh fuck it.

dr_rock
5 star comment, zato