Before there were general-purpose computers, there were special-purpose computers that did one thing and did it, often, surprisingly well.
Attn: steampunk authors.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-strange-victorian-computer-that-generated-latin-verse
It’s so tempting to headline this, “Generate Latin verse with this one weird old trick!”
Oh my gosh, how did I not know about this???!
Re: generating Latin, this is a hoot:
bestlatin.blogspot.com – Special Edition: Steganometrographia