The machine was never the miracle

In the winter of 1816, I kept the shutters closed at noon and copied the instruments by candlelight. The room was not a theatre of progress; it was a narrow chamber in Geneva where each measured pulse made the silence more difficult to bear.

The first spark changes the question

A current can animate a body, but it cannot supply a reason for living. That distinction followed me from the dissecting table to the frozen lake: invention is not redemption, and a maker remains answerable long after the apparatus has gone dark.