1. A piece of hardware that encapsulates some
function but can't be used without some kind of front end.
Today we have, especially, `print engine': the guts of a laser
printer. 2. An analogous piece of software; notionally, one that
does a lot of noisy crunching, such as a `database engine'.
The hacker senses of `engine' are actually close to its original,
pre-Industrial-Revolution sense of a skill, clever device, or
instrument (the word is cognate to `ingenuity'). This sense had
not been completely eclipsed by the modern connotation of
power-transducing machinery in Charles Babbage's time, which
explains why he named the stored-program computer that
he designed in 1844 the `Analytical Engine'.
Worthless.
-- Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD DCL, FRS, FRAS
(Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the
Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the
"analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September
15, 1842....
