The Babbage Analytical Engine (BAEN) rolled out of the assembly shed in 1845, 12 years after Charles Babbage had built the first Difference Engine.

One of the first uses the BAEN was put to was as a telegraph operator. A numeric code, (BAENs where never digital, they were base ten and still are to this day), was devised based on letter frequency in the English alphabet, with the most common being the assigned the number one.

During the territorial disputes between the American Commonwealth and French Lousianna, the American Army funded research into miniaturizing the BAEN, primarily into the Babbage Engine Works in Virgina, who were able to perform the research. The orginal BAEN was ten feet long, twelve feet high, and seven feet deep.

The wizards of Virginia were able to reduce the size to one quarter, by determining how small they could make the smallest part on an existing BAEN. It however has this nasty tendency to run hot, so cooling fans were installed. A Virginia BAEN could warm a room with its waste heat, but its small size made it much more attractive to businesses, and it began to appear everywhere. By 1876, every major business had three or four of them, with one dedicated to sending messages over the telegraph.

However, by 1877, the VBEW introduced the BAEN 7, two foot wide, 6 inches tall, and 1.5 feet deep. A Desktop model. It no longer need to use loomcards to instruct it, now a loom system could be turned into a Weaver Box, that would clip right onto a special reader on the BAEN 7. The Weaver Box was extremely special, as it allowed the instructions to be read in random order, allowing for incredibly complicated operations, but reduce the memory requirements for the standard BAEN, which had to store the entire instruction set in a set of cogged wheels. The BAEN 7 came with another revolutionary device, a flat display.

The display has a flat white surface, perforated by thousands of small holes. On the other side of the hole is a black wire. Images and characters where rendered on screen by the black wire being pushed through a small hole in the display, putting a black dot on the "screen". The original display board could only render an image two thousand "needles" by 700 "needles". New boards can display up to 6000 needles of resolution.

The Display allowed you to read a message and not be forced to print it out. Telemail was born from this in 1879 one year before Gridney's last experiment.