Extracts from Lovelace's notes One of Ada's most famous quotes is from Note A, p. 694:
Again, it [the
Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects
found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the
abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of
adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine
. . . Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds
in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such
expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific
pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
Once Ada had made the distinction between numbers and the operations to be
performed, it was not difficult for her to project further how the Analytical
Engine would then be capable of giving two types of results; numerical and
symbolic, (eg algebraic). In effect, an Analytical Engine could generate new
programs as well as numbers. As a result the Analytical Engine opened up a vast
new territory for the analysis of information. Here again, the Ada software
language contains somewhat unique facilities corresponding in a sense to Ada's
insight. One such Ada facility is the generic subprogram, a template for future
software generation. Having defined a generic subprogram for data of one type,
the Ada software developer can create new copies automatically tailored to data
of other types.
Another often quoted selection from Note A, p. 696
The distinctive
characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible
to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine
the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the
principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the
most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this
that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in
the Difference Engine. We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves
algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.
In addition to Ada's prescient comments linking the Analytical Engine to its
potential use for sound and graphics she provided what might be justly called
"the first computer program", a plan for the Analytical Engine to calculate
Bernoulli numbers, a very complicated chore. This table is also found in this
chapter.
However, of all the material in the translation, the following Note has
probably engendered the most controversy today in light of its denial of the
possibility of creating original knowledge through so-called ``Artificial
Intelligence.''
From Note G, p. 722
It is desirable to guard against the possibility of
exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. In
considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate
what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort
of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do
discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable. The
Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do
whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has
no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to
assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with. This it is
calculated to effect primarily and chiefly of course, through its executive
faculties; but it is likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on
science itself in another manner. For, in so distributing and combining the
truths and the formula of analysis, that they may become most easily and rapidly
amenable to the mechanical combinations of the engine, the relations and the
nature of many subjects in that science are necessarily thrown into new lights,
and more profoundly investigated.