Which brings us to the work of Charles Babbage.

Babbage was a remarkable man who had the misfortune to invent the electronic computer in an age of mechanical gears. He spent his life, fortune, and humor in trying to overcome this obstacle.

It took 100 years for the full significance of his work to be
appreciated. By the time Babbage entered Trinity Collage at Cambridge, he was a passionate mathematician. He and his friends formed the Analytical Society. One function of the Society was to encourage English mathematicians to replace the Newtonian mathematical notation with that of Leibniz used on the continent.