Description: In the 1821, Charles Babbage, an inventor and mathematician, was reviewing a set of mathematical tables with a colleague in preparation for a scientific presentation. After finding a wealth of errors in the results which had been calculated by a group of human 'computers' who were responsible for performing these routine calculations by hand, Babbage became incredibly frustrated and exclaimed "I wish to God these calculations had been calculated by steam". This outburst began Babbage's lifelong pursuit of a machine that would provide the kind of mathematic accuracy that humans, by nature, are incapable of attaining. As Babbage realized, these errors had the potential to cause serious problems in the science, engineering, banking, construction, and navigation of the time that relied heavily on such calculation.

With gripping prose and a colorful cast of characters including the ravishing Ada, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron, as well as the temperamental and talented craftsmen who worked with him, Doron Swade tells the story of Babbage's heroic quest (150 years before the construction of the modern computer!), set against the fascinating politics and science of this incredibly inventive Victorian decade. "The Difference Engine" is also the story of the twentieth-century sequel to Babbage's pursuit -- Doron Swade's own quest to build Babbage's machine for the first time from Babbage's machine for the first time from Babbage's original designs.

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