New York: Bantam, (2003.) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Historical novel based on an event in the life of Charles Babbage - "an English genius of legendary eccentricity. He invented the cowcatcher, the ophthalmoscope, and the 'penny post' . . . And all his life he was in desperate need of enormous sums of money to build his fabled reasoning machine, the Difference Engine, the first digital computer in history. To publicize his Engine, Babbage sponsors a private astronomical expedition - a party of four men and one remarkable woman - who will set out from Washington City and travel by wagon train two thousand miles west, beyond the last known outposts of civilization. Their ostensible purpose is to observe a total eclipse of the sun predicted by Babbage's computer, and to photograph it with the newly invented camera of Louis Daguerre." INSCRIBED by the author on the title page "For . .. . Greetings from the old Santa Fe Trail. All best wishes." 305 pp. ISBN: 0-553-802089.