Mechanical computers are nothing new. The remains of a 2,000 year old analogue computer known as the Antikythera mechanism were discovered in Greece in 1902.
And during the nineteenth century, English mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage designed various steam powered mechanical computers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6912023.stm 
Burt shovel some more coal into the boiler , I need to do some computing , I wonder if they tried to O/C them ,