In London, England, the mathematician Charles Babbage designed the Difference Engine, a mechanical computer intended to calculate and print mathematical tables. He secured government funding in 1821, but the project was plagued by technical difficulties and personal conflicts, and the machine was never completed during his lifetime. A later version, the Analytical Engine, was even more ambitious, incorporating concepts like loops and conditional branching, making it a forerunner of the modern computer. Babbage was widely derided for his failures, and it was not until 1991 that a working model of the Difference Engine was built from his original plans.

Babbage's Difference Engine is a landmark in the history of computing, and its failure has been the subject of much literary and poetic reflection. The story of Babbage's struggles and the eventual vindication of his ideas has been told in poetry and prose, representing the triumph of vision over adversity. The engine's use of cogs and gears has also inspired poets like William Blake, who saw machines as a threat to the human spirit, and modern poets who explore the relationship between humans and machines. The concept of a 'computer' before the age of electricity is a powerful symbol of human ingenuity and the limits of technology.