Re: engine vs. motors vs. mills

[Ken Ames <amesk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

...and Babbage's machine was called a 'difference engine'.

Ken Ames

Quoting Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>:

> On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Jerry Casper wrote:
> 
> > > > I always flinched a little when I hear people call
> > > an "internal combustion
> > > > engine" a "motor".  
> 
> >   So what about the old expression " mill ", I've read
> > some antique books using the expression " he worked
> > all night on the mill under the hood ". I guess sort
> > of like a thrashing machine? LOL. Just another
> > expression I'd heard, anyone know where it came from ?
> 
> Likely it came from the fact that "mill" got applied to some
> of the oldest of man-made mechanical contraptions (another one
> of those words...).
> 
> Charles Babbage designed a complex automatic calculator (almost,
> but not quite, a computer!) in 1840's? and he called the guts
> of it, that did the intricate addition etc, "the mill", numbers
> were the grist, got milled, then output.
> 
> If you track the earliest use of (engine, motor, mill,
> contraption,...) in English, you'll find they got swiped from
> 
> greek or latin probably 300 - 400 or more years ago.
> 
> 
> 


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