"Charles Babbage is remembered today as the great pioneer of computing. But in nineteenth-century London he was known as a leading social figure, philosopher, militant reformer, and pioneer of industrial science. His salon was one of the great meeting places of Europe's liberal intellectuals, Friend of Wellington, Shaftesbury, and Angela Burdett-Coutts, as well as Darwin, Lyell, Faraday, the Brunels, and Fox-Talbot, Babbage was also well known on the Continent and in the U.S.A. Byron's daughter, Ada Lovelace, was a close friend and wrote a popilar explanation of his Engines. These included many of the features of a modern computer, the result of incomparable logcial power combined with a mechanical ingenuity worthy of Leonardo da Vinci. His first Calculating Engine was funded initially by the Government and received strong support from the Duke of Wellington, but Babbage's later treatment by Government prompted Charles Dickens to create the celebrated Circumlocution Office.

Babbage also pioneered machine tools, lighthouses, codes, stage lighting, the optalmoscope, postal services, and operations research, in which he conducted a unique study of Brunel's Great Western Railway."