Nathan Myhrvold commissioned his own personal full-scale model of a Charles Babbage-designed difference engine. Before it goes into his personal collection, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA is putting it on display. Built by the same engineers that constructed the one in the London Science Museum, the difference engine cost a million dollars and ran into the same kind of setbacks that a typical hardware project runs into, frustrations and a vendor who went out of business. (via numerous techie blogs)