In 1840 Thomas Fowler, an inventor and a self-taught engineer, built a calculating machine made entirely out of wood.
Neither the machine nor drawings survived. Mechanical engineer Mark Glusker, working with a team of historians in England, built a reconstruction to prove that it worked.
Fowler was a contemporary of Charles Babbage, one of the pioneers of early computers. While Babbage used a decimal system, Fowler used a base 3 calculation. Mark Glusker will provide a lecture about the machine, base 3 calculation and Thomas Fowler.
For further information, please visit: http://www.mortati.com/glusker/fowler/about.htm