¹⁸The great pioneer of mechanical computing technology, Charles Babbage, commented in his book Passages from the Life of a Philosopher in 1864 that not one but two members of the British parliament asked him whether his computer (which he called the Difference Engine) could output correct answers given incorrect data. His reaction was both frank and hilarious: “I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”