The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform... But it is likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on science itself.

We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

In the case of the Analytical Engine, we have undoubtedly to lay out a certain capital of analytical labour in one particular line, but this is in order that the engine may bring us in a much larger return in another line.

Those who incline to very strictly utilitarian views may perhaps feel that the peculiar powers of the Analytical Engine bear upon questions of abstract and speculative science rather than upon those involving everyday and ordinary human interests.

The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere 'calculating machines.' It holds a position wholly its own, and the considerations it suggests are more interesting in their nature.

The science of operations, as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of itself, and has its own abstract truth and value.