Lovelace and Babbage(ID:7032/)

Ada King, Countess Lovelace's  symbolic system for encoding the Babbage machines, described in detail in her notes to Menebrea's account fo the Babbage seminar in Turin.

"We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves"

NB Some revisionist researchers (Woolley, Holt) say that Lovelace was a useful mouthpiece for Babbage rather than an original thinker, and that most of the material cited in her notes were supplied by Babbage himself, and that he would have had purposes for his machines before he built them.

Given that this is a history of the languages, then it is best to remark that the programming system - likely to be the first in the world - did exist regardless of its authorship, and that this entry serves to note the fact.

People:
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Lovelace and Babbage => Aiken CPC translator   Influence
References:
  • Notes to "Article XXIX. Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers" in Richard Taylor (ed) Scientific Memoirs, Selections from The Transactions of Foreign Academies and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals, F.S.A.,Vol III London: 1843, view details External link: Online copy Extract: The first every stored program?
    Figures, the symbols of numerical magnitude, are frequently also the symbols of operations, as when they are the indices of powers. . . Whenever numbers meaning operations and not quantities (such as indices of powers) are inscribed on any column or set of columns, those columns immediately act in a wholly separate and independent manner, becoming connected with the operating mechanism exclusively, and reacting upon this. They never come into combination with numbers upon any other columns meaning quantities; though, of course, if there are numbers meaning operations upon n columns, these may combine amongst each other, and will often be required to do so, just as numbers meaning quantities combine with each other in any variety. It might have been arranged that all numbers meaning operations should have appeared on some separate portion of the engine from that which presents numerical quantities; but the present mode is in some cases more simple, and offers in reality quite as much distinctness when understood.
  • Perl, Teri. The Ladies Diary or Woman's Almanac, 1704-1841, Historica Mathematica 6 (1979): 36-53 view details
  • Wallis, Ruth and Peter. Female Philomaths, Historica Mathematica 7 , (1980), 57-64. view details
  • Toole, Betty Alexandra "Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers" Strawberry Press, Mill Valley, CA view details
    Resources
    • 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.
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