Charles Babbage was a genius inventor who designed the first computers, but never saw them come to fruition. While his smaller works have been functionally reproduced, his most ambitious was the Babbage Analytical Engine, the first device which could be termed a computer. It had a programming language, could handle logical operations, and store and retrieve numbers. Unlike his other plans, the Analytical Engine was never finalized, and he tweaked it until his death. Just over a year ago a plan dubbed Project28 was announced to attempt to build it, and as of October work has finally begun.

The British Science Museum holds all the plans for the device and has totally digitized the extant blueprints, which the Project28 team will now have access to (and will be released to the public next year). From here, the project will create a computer model to see if the device will function before the actual construction begins, hopefully resulting in a truck-sized Victorian era computer.