With this view, I advised that it should be placed in one of the much-frequented rooms of the British Museum. Another locality was, however, assigned to it, and it was confided by the Government to the care of King’s College, Somerset House. It remained in safe custody within its glass case in the Museum of that body for twenty years. It is remarkable that during that long period no person should have studied its structure, and, by explaining its nature and use, have acquired an amount of celebrity which the singularity of that knowledge would undoubtedly have produced.
The College authorities did justice to their charge. They put it in the place of honour, in the centre of their Museum, and would, no doubt have given facilities to any of their members or to other persons who might have wished to study it.
But the system quietly pursued by the Government, of ignoring the existence of the Difference Engine and its inventor doubtlessly exercised its deadening influence[27] on those who were inclined, by taste or acquirements, to take such a course. { 149}
[27] An illustration fell under my notice a few days after this paragraph was printed. A _new_ work on Geometrical Drawing, commissioned by the Committee of Council on Education, was published by Professor Bradley. I have not been able to find in it a single word concerning “Mechanical Notation,” not even the very simplest portion of that science, namely, the Art of Lettering Drawings. It would seem impossible that any _Professor_ of so limited a subject could be ignorant of the existence of such an important addition to its powers.
1. In 1850, the Government appointed a Commission to organize the Exhibition of 1851.
The name of the author of the _Economy of Manufactures_ was not thought worthy by the Government to be placed on that Commission.
2. In 1851, the Commissioners of the International Exhibition did not think proper to exhibit the Difference Engine, although it was the property of the nation. They were as insensible to the greatest mechanical as to, what has been regarded by some, the greatest intellectual triumph of their country.
3. When it was decided by the people of the United States to have an Exhibition at New York, they sent a Commissioner to Europe to make arrangement for its success. He was authorized to apply for the loan of the Difference Engine for a few months, and was empowered to give any pecuniary guarantee which might be required for its safe return.