A difference engine is an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.It was designed in the 1820s, and was first created by Charles Babbage.The name, the difference engine, is derived from the method of divided differences, a way to interpolate or tabulate functions by using a small set of polynomial co-efficients. Some of the most common …

The Difference Engine (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk.. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a …