Beginnings of a revolution - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 15

Augustus De Morgan, a well-known mathematician who had made significant contributions to both algebra
and logic. Ada had a very high opinion of her own abilities and wrote to Babbage that “the more I study, the
more insatiable do I feel my genius for it to be.” 13 Her opinion of her talent is supported, in part at least, by a
letter written by De Morgan to her mother. In the letter, De Morgan suggested that Ada's abilities could lead
her to become “an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence.” 14
At the suggestion of a mutual friend, the scientist Charles Wheatstone, Lovelace translated Menabrea's
paper for publication in English. Babbage then suggested that she add some notes of her own to the paper.
He took a great interest in her work and gave her the material and examples he had used in his talk in Turin
and helped her by annotating drafts of her notes. Babbage also wrote a completely new example for her: the
calculation of the Bernoulli numbers (a complex sequence of rational numbers) using the Analytical Engine.
Although Ada did not originate this example, she clearly understood
the procedure well enough to point out a mistake in Babbage's calcu-
lation. She both amplified Babbage's ideas and expressed them in her
own forthright manner, as is evident from these two examples from
her notes:

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 reg-
ulating, 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. . . .
Many persons . . . imagine that because the business of the Engine is to
give its results in numerical notation the nature of its processes must con-
sequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and ana-
lytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical
quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and
in fact it might bring out its results in algebraic notation, were provisions
made accordingly. 15

B.1.6 A portrait of Ada Lovelace (1815-
52) drawn by a robotic artist. Her father,
the Romantic poet Lord Byron, was
instrumental in ensuring that she was
educated in mathematics. She was the
first to write in English about the poten-
tial capabilities of Babbage's Analytical
Engine and is considered by some to be
the first “computer programmer.” She
was certainly the first to emphasize that
the machine could manipulate symbols
as well as perform numerical calcula-
tions. She also wrote that perhaps one
day machines would even be able to
write poetry.

Babbage certainly had not published or developed the idea of
using his machine for algebra in any detail. One remark from Lovelace
is also often quoted in debates about artificial intelligence and comput-
ers: “The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate
anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.” 16
We will look later at the question of whether computers are capable of
recognizable intelligence.