Charles Babbage designed the first automatic computing engines, but none of his creations was ever fully built.

In 2002, London’s Science Museum completed the first fully-functional Difference Engine. A duplicate machine was constructed for Nathan Myhrvold, tech millionaire and former chief technology officer at Microsoft. That second machine is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

Photo credit: Jitze Couperus

The photos in this gallery were taken by Jitze Couperus in January, 2010 during a visit to the museum. Mr. Couperus has graciously allowed us to republish his photos of Babbage’s Difference Engine and other historic computers such as the Librascope LGP-30, Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600, and Cray Y-MP.

Check out the gallery, “Babbage’s Difference Engine and other historic computers,” for more photos.