Analytical Engine history
A design for a general-purpose digital computer proposed by Charles Babbage in 1837 as a successor to his earlier special-purpose Difference Engine.
The Analytical Engine was to be built from brass gears powered by steam with input given on punched cards. Babbage could never secure enough funding to build it, and so it was, and never has been, constructed.
(http://fourmilab.ch/babbage/).
(1998-10-19)