“The successful construction of all machinery depends on the perfection of the tools employed; and whoever is a master in the arts of tool-making possesses the key to the construction of all machines… The contrivance and construction of tools must therefore ever stand at the head of the industrial arts.”

— Charles Babbage

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 173; As cited in: Samuel Smiles (1864) Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA245, p. 245

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Charles Babbage 40

mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical enginee… 1791–1871

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