resistance, economizing time, harmonizing the mechanism, and giving to
the whole mechanical action the utmost practical perfection.
The system of mechanical contrivances by which the results, here
attempted to be described, are attained, form only one order of
expedients adopted in this machinery;--although such is the perfection
of their action, that in any ordinary case they would be regarded as
having attained the ends in view with an almost superfluous degree of
precision. Considering, however, the immense importance of the purposes
which the mechanism was destined to fulfil, its inventor determined that
a higher order of expedients should be superinduced upon those already
described; the purpose of which should be to obliterate all small errors
or inequalities which might, even by remote possibility, arise, either
from defects in the original formation of the mechanism, from inequality
of wear, from casual strain or derangement,--or, in short, from any
other cause whatever. Thus the movements of the first and principal
parts of the mechanism were regarded by him merely as a first, though
extremely nice approximation, upon which a system of small corrections
was to be subsequently made by suitable and independent mechanism. This
supplementary system of mechanism is so contrived, that if one or more
of the moving parts of the mechanism of the first order be slightly out
of their places, they will be forced to their exact position by the
action of the mechanical expedients of the second order to which we now
allude. If a more considerable derangement were produced by any
accidental disturbance, the consequence would be that the supplementary
mechanism would cause the whole system to become locked, so that not a
wheel would be capable of moving; the impelling power would necessarily
lose all its energy, and the machine would stop. The consequence of this
exquisite arrangement is, that the machine will either calculate
rightly, or not at all.
The supernumerary contrivances which we now allude to, being in a great
degree unconnected with each other, and scattered through the machinery
to a certain extent, independent of the mechanical arrangement of the
principal parts, we find it difficult to convey any distinct notion of
their nature or form.
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