The novel is chiefly set in 1855. The fictional historical background diverges from our timeline around 1824, at which point Charles Babbage completes his Difference Engine and proceeds to develop an Analytical Engine. He becomes politically powerful and at the 1830 general election successfully opposes the Tory Government of the Duke of Wellington. Although Wellington stages a "coup d'état" in 1830 in an attempt to overturn his defeat and prevent the acceleration of technological change and social upheaval, he is assassinated in 1831. The Industrial Radical Party, led by a Lord Byron who survives the Greek War of Independence, comes to power. The Tory Party and hereditary peerage are eclipsed, and British trade unions assist in the ascendancy of the Industrial Radical Party (much as they aided the Labour Party of Great Britain in the twentieth century in our own world). As a result, Luddite anti-technological working class revolutionaries are ruthlessly suppressed.