I think so. The difference engine was a century ahead of it's time, but there wasn't anything in the way to prevent technology from developing earlier. If it h

I think so. The difference engine was a century ahead of it's time, but there wasn't anything in the way to prevent technology from developing earlier. If it had not only been successful, but caught on, people would have quickly made improvements, invented the idea of Turing machines and general purpose computers, Boolean logic, more efficient gates, etc. You could even have had transistors being invented in the 1800s! Who knows how far it could have gotten.