"How did you build this? Th-this shouldn't have been possible to build!"
Chen Wu hurried forward for a closer look and discovered that this Difference Engine was not the earliest version. It was a relatively complete Difference Engine, containing a power system, a calculating system, and a printing system.
"You really recognize it!" Seeing Chen Wu's reaction, Wang Zhenyi felt somewhat defeated. "Just where is that rural hometown of yours? How do you recognize everything?"
"Cough—" Chen Wu came back to himself. "Haha, I just happened to hear someone talk about it."
"Forget it!" Seeing him start to laugh it off again, Wang Zhenyi curled her lip. "As you can see, this is the only Difference Engine in the world. It can calculate polynomials up to the seventh degree with numbers of no more than thirty-one digits."
"How exactly was this thing made?" Chen Wu repeated his earlier question, like a broken record.
At Chen Wu's question, reverence appeared on Wang Zhenyi's face. "This has something to do with Emperor Taizong!"
"Don't tell me Emperor Taizong built this machine?"
Absolutely impossible!
If that predecessor transmigrator had truly possessed such ability, what he left behind would not have been some little thing like Emperor Taizong's Conjecture, but a whole stack of mathematical papers.
"Of course not. But Emperor Taizong proposed a rough concept and named it the Difference Engine," Wang Zhenyi said. "Later, after the Academy of Sciences was established, someone found the concept feasible. Combining it with the principles of the gear-based adder brought from the West, they perfected it."
"Because it was connected to Emperor Taizong, the Great Shun imperial family supported the construction of the Difference Engine, providing manpower and resources."
"That's impossible! It isn't a matter of money!" Chen Wu still could not understand. "Great Shun's mechanical