Last week I went over to Mountain View to see the Computer History Museum.  It was a great testement to the human spirit to learn and innovate.  I was also impressed with the ability of the human mind to envision something that is not even there.  One of the first machines I saw was the Babbage Differential Machine used to compute algorithms and polynomial functions.  Prior to this invention, mathematicians referred to tables with this information.  Some human finally had the idea of creating a machine to perform these calculations to allow for further advances in knowledge.