Charles Babbage (1791–1871) was an English mathematician and inventor with a splendidly cranky streak, remembered as the "father of the computer." He dreamed up mechanical machines of brass and gears that could calculate anything — roughly a century before the technology to actually finish them existed.
Babbage designed the Difference Engine and then the far grander Analytical Engine — a
machine with a "mill" and a "store," which are basically a processor and memory. In other
words, he sketched
Babbage was famously grumpy about noise. He campaigned against London's organ-grinders and street musicians, claiming they ruined his concentration and cost him a quarter of his working power. He also grumbled at a poet's line "every moment dies a man, every moment one is born," suggesting the numbers didn't quite balance and it should be slightly more than one born per death. A stickler to the very end.