But did you know the first computer was actually designed (although the designer couldn't afford to finish it) during the Napoleonic Wars? They made it at the science Museum in London and it worked!
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine! Sometimes I think it's a shame that the funding held it up... who knows what things would be like now if computing had taken off then. Then again, it might not have been a good thing at all (see the William Gibson/Bruce Sterling novel, The Difference Engine, for a horribly dystopian look at it).