Labor savings
I will now examine what portion of this labour might be dispensed
with, in case it should be deemed advisable to compute these or any
similar tables of equal extent by the aid of the engine I have referred
to.
In the first place, the labour of the first section would be
considerably reduced, because the formulae used in the great work I
have been describing have already been investigated and published.
One person, or at the utmost two, might therefore conduct it.
If the persons composing the second section, instead of delivering
the numbers they calculate to the computers of the third section,
were to deliver them to the engine, the whole of the remaining
operations would be executed by machinery, and it would only be
necessary to employ people to copy down as fast as they were able the
figures presented to them by the engine. If, however, the contrivances
for printing were brought to perfection and employed, even
this labour would be unnecessary, and a few superintendents would
manage the machine and receive the calculated pages set up in type.
Thus the number of calculators employed, instead of amounting to
ninety-six, would be reduced to twelve. This number might however
be considerably diminished, because when an engine is used the
intervals between the differences calculated by the second section
may be greatly enlarged. In the tables of logarithms M. Prony caused
the differences to be calculated at intervals of two hundred, in order
to save the labour of the third section: but as that would now devolve
on machinery, which would scarcely move the slower for its additional
burthen, the intervals might properly be enlarged to three or
four times that quantity. This would cause a considerable diminution
in the labour of the second section. If to this diminution of mental
labour we add that which arises from the whole work of the
compositor being executed by the machine, and the total suppression
of that most annoying of all literary labour, the correction of the
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