Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer of Microsoft, commissioned the Difference Engine No. 2 that is set to debut at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, on Saturday. It's the second such engine built from plans left by Charles Babbage, a 19th-century mathematician who was never able to build one. Myhrvold now leads Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Washington, company, which he says fosters "invention capital" to help inventors get their products into the real world, but critics say it's a "patent troll," buying up patents so it can later sue companies that use them.
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