Have you read the book "The Difference Engine" by Gibson and Sterling? (Kind of what kicked off the whole Steampunk genre). Basically a taste of modern societ

Have you read the book "The Difference Engine" by Gibson and Sterling? (Kind of what kicked off the whole Steampunk genre). Basically a taste of modern society could have been realized many decades earlier. But the real bummer, is that Edison's lab essentially invented vacuum tubes, but shelved it as Edison didn't see any profit potential in it. Another missed opportunity for earlier computing.