Ink on paper cartoon by Marc Foden, showing cylinders of mail moving on an aerial cable pulley system from the farmer's house to his workshop above the stables. This original artwork was designed for the Charles Babbage exhibition held at the Science Museum in London in 1991, for the section on prodigious inventions by Babbage (1792-1871). He was a computer pioneer, inventor, reformer, mathematician, philosopher and political economist. His 'Analytical Engine' of 1834 was the first calculating engine designed along modern lines, and it is for this that he is widely considered to be the 'father' of computing.
© Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library