Monday 3 October 2016

The Strange Victorian Computer That Generated Latin Verse


In July 1845, British curiosity-seekers headed to London's Egyptian Hall to try out the novelty of the summer. For the price of one shilling, they could stand in front of a wooden bureau and pull a lever.

At the end of its 'grinding,' what it produced was not a numeric computation or a row of fruit symbols, but something quite different: a polished line of Latin poetry. This strange gadget was called the Eureka.

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