Re: [math-fun] "Steampunk" mathematics?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigen%C3%A8re_cipher "Charles Babbage is known to have broken a variant of the [Vigenère cipher] cipher as early as 1854; however, he didn't publish his work." If Babbage had indeed been able to build a steam-driven code-breaking machine, such a machine would definitely have changed history. At 11:43 AM 9/11/2014, Dave Dyer wrote:

And how could I neglect both the Enigma machines and Turing's "bombe" devices, which were mechanical computers used to codebreak enigma messages.