A brief history
of calculating machines...
Born in 1791 to a wealthy London banker, Charles Babbage was an eccentric British genius accredited with developing the blueprint for the modern computer. After marrying without his father's permission, Babbage no longer had access to the Babbage family fortune. He spent his time applying his mind to tricky problems. His inventions include the speedometer and the cowcatcher, a device fixed to the front of steam locomotives to remove cattle from the railroad tracks. He is also credited with creating the way modern postage is handled after declaring that the cost of labor to calculate postage by distance far outweighed the cost of the postage itself.
  Babbage was obsessed with statistical problems and had a flair for anything scientific or mathematical. In 1821, Babbage and astronomer John Herschel were examining a collection of mathematical tables of the type used for astronomical, navigational and engineering purposes. The two men were amazed at how many human errors were contained in these tables - obviously the cause of many nautical and engineering disasters. Babbage exclaimed "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!". This was the starting point of Babbage's extraordinary endeavor to build a mechanical calculating machine capable of executing the tables to a high degree of accuracy.
  In 1823, Babbage designed a calculating machine consisting of 25,000 moving parts called "Difference Engine No. 1". The machine was to be built using government money. Unfortunately, Babbage was better at innovating than he was implementing and, after 10 years of toil, he abandoned Difference Engine No. 1 in favor of his new design "Difference Engine No. 2".
  By this time, the British government had already spent over £17,000 (a huge sum for the day) on Babbage's first design and suddenly lost confidence in him. It was this withdrawal of support that then prompted Babbage to complain:

"Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple".