Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician who, in 1843, published an extensive set of notes on Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine, an unbuilt mechanical general purpose computer, including what is widely described as the first published algorithm intended for execution by a machine, a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers. She is often called the first computer programmer for this reason, though the description is debated among historians: Babbage's own working notes contain earlier program fragments he never published, and some scholars argue Lovelace's principal contribution was less the algorithm itself than her broader insight, stated in the same notes, that such a machine could manipulate symbols generally and not only numbers.
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FAQs
What did Lovelace say the Analytical Engine might do with music?
She wrote that the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music if the relations of pitched sounds could be expressed in its notation.
In her notes on Menabrea's memoir of the Analytical Engine, Lovelace wrote that the engine might act upon things besides number, if objects were found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations. Her example was music: supposing the relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
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Algorithm, Concepts Lovelace's 1843 notes on the Analytical Engine included what is widely described as the first published algorithm intended for execution by a machine.
Source The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson
Algorithm, Concepts Why this is disputed. Ada Lovelace's 1843 notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine are widely described as containing the first published algorithm intended for execution by a machine (a method for computing Bernoulli numbers), and she is often called the first computer programmer for it. This attribution is genuinely disputed by historians: Babbage's own working notes contain earlier, unpublished program fragments of his own, and some scholars argue Lovelace's principal originality lay less in the algorithm itself than in her broader published insight that such a machine could manipulate symbols generally, not only numbers.
Source The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson
Her 1843 published notes on the engine include what is widely described as the first computer program; the correspondence between Babbage and Lovelace describing the engine is the first documented computer architecture.
Source Wikipedia: Computer architecture
Credited
In Field
Source The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital RevolutionWalter Isaacson
Invented
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Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2014
2. Wikipedia: Ada Lovelace
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
She was the first to recognise the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. Lovelace is often considered the first computer programmer.
Lead section
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 - 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine.
View the Source Wikidata: Ada Lovelace
Wikipedia: Computer architecture
WikipediaAssociated With: Analytical Engine, History sectionQuote, Associated With: Analytical Engine, History section
The first documented computer architecture was in the correspondence between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, describing the analytical engine.
Wikipedia: Note G
Credited: Note G, Lead paragraph
Note G is a computer algorithm traditionally attributed to Ada Lovelace
Invented: Note G, Lead paragraph
Note G is a computer algorithm traditionally attributed to Ada Lovelace that was designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers using the hypothetical analytical engine designed by Charles Babbage.
View the SourceDissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Associated With: Algorithm
A minority but persistent strand of scholarship holds that Charles Babbage, not Ada Lovelace, deserves primary credit for the Bernoulli-number algorithm published in her 1843 notes. Babbage's own surviving working papers contain program fragments and calculating sequences for the Analytical Engine that predate the notes' publication, and correspondence between Lovelace and Babbage during the notes' preparation shows him supplying mathematical guidance and corrections. Proponents of this view do not dispute that Lovelace wrote and published the notes, including the algorithm and her own broader remarks on the machine's general symbol-manipulating potential, only that the algorithm's underlying mathematical work may have originated substantially with Babbage rather than being Lovelace's independent invention.
A dissenting reading, from Historians crediting Charles Babbage as primary author of the algorithmWalter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Simon and Schuster, 2014
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