Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in which it appe

Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in which it appeared? Oh, but it would have been very useful! Recall that one of the first uses of mechanical calculators was to produce tables for aiming artillery. They certainly had artillery in 1830! And precision aiming would surely have been valuable. Other uses are likely as well -- astronomical calculations for navigation, perhaps; tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions, which were already being produced by hand; probably more. Maybe in 1500 it wouldn't have been so useful, but by 1800 I'm quite certain it would have been very useful indeed.