From Hugh Kenner, The Counterfeiters (1968):

That is Babbage’s beatific vision [of his Difference Engine], that slow settling of suspended cards into a receiving box forever. There is perhaps no parallel for so detailed and dogged a creation in a technology verging on obsolescence unless the creation of the brontosaurus, which half-swam and half-walked and thrilled throughout its slow ganglia, and metabolized plants, and was awesome.