Babbage fairly clearly knew this and was playing up his public persona of "irascible genius who must have everything precisely quantified" for laughs. His autob

Babbage fairly clearly knew this and was playing up his public persona of "irascible genius who must have everything precisely quantified" for laughs. His autobiography is full of this kind of self-aware self-mockery; another funny example is "Every moment dies a man, every moment 1 1/16 is born" (http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi879.htm http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi879.htm) In other words, the quote isn't written to illustrate the stupidity of politicians, it's written to have a laugh at contextually-oblivious engineers like Babbage.