Babbage later designed a more general Analytical Engine, but only part of it was completed when he died in 1871. This device was intended to evaluate any mathematical formula, but it was never successfully created. A Swedish printer, George Scheutz, in 1854 built a machine based on Babbage's Difference Engine design, and versions were used by the British and American governments.

The Difference Engine is powered by a hand-turned crank and a complex system of gears.

The California museum will be missing a few of the more eccentric elements in the British museum's permanent Babbage exhibit, notably one-half of the brain that created the Difference Engine. The Science Museum holds about 800 human remains, in varying quantities, including a lock of Napoleon's hair, cut off by Dr. Barry O'Meara at St. Helena where the emperor died, "human skin from one half of a male body, probably French, 19th century" and a rather numerous collection of shrunken heads, from Ecuador's Jivaro tribe.

The Victorian aesthetic exemplified in Babbage's creations has fueled a literary genre called "steampunk." It blends the hallmarks of a world running on steam power with elements of fantasy, science fiction or speculative fiction. Babbage's work was the inspiration for "The Difference Engine," a 1990 novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, one of the first steampunk hits. The novel creates an alternative Victorian world where a steam-powered version of Babbage's difference engine is created, launching the "information age" in the 19th century.