Difference Engine, an early calculating machine, verging on being the first computer, designed and partially built during the 1820s and ’30s by Charles Babbage. Babbage was an English mathematician and inventor; he invented the cowcatcher, reformed the British postal system, and was a pioneer in the fields of operations research and actuarial science. It was Babbage who first suggested that the weather of years past could be read from tree rings. He also had a lifelong fascination with keys, ciphers, and mechanical dolls (automatons). As a founding member of the Royal Astronomical Society, Babbage had seen a clear need to