Editing Ada Lovelace (section)

==Work==
Throughout her life, Lovelace was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including [[phrenology]]{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=198}} and [[mesmerism]].{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|pp=232–33}} After her work with Babbage, Lovelace continued to work on other projects. In 1844, she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings ("a calculus of the nervous system").{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=305}} She never achieved this, however. In part, her interest in the brain came from a long-running preoccupation, inherited from her mother, about her "potential" madness. As part of her research into this project, she visited the electrical engineer Andrew Crosse in 1844 to learn how to carry out electrical experiments.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|pp=310–14}} In the same year, she wrote a review of a paper by Baron [[Karl von Reichenbach]], ''Researches on Magnetism'', but this was not published and does not appear to have progressed past the first draft.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|pp=315–17}} In 1851, the year before her cancer struck, she wrote to her mother mentioning "certain productions" she was working on regarding the relation of maths and music.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=335}}

[[File:Ada Lovelace.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Portrait of Ada Lovelace]]'' by the British painter [[Margaret Sarah Carpenter]] (1836)|alt=Ada Lovelace, painted portrait circa 1836]]

Lovelace first met [[Charles Babbage]] in June 1833, through their mutual friend Mary Somerville. Later that month, Babbage invited Lovelace to see the prototype for his [[difference engine]].{{Sfn|Toole|1998|pp=36–38}} She became fascinated with the machine and used her relationship with Somerville to visit Babbage as often as she could. Babbage was impressed by Lovelace's intellect and analytic skills. He called her "The Enchantress of Number".<ref name="Number">{{cite journal |url=http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/ |first=Stephen |last=Wolfram |author-link=Stephen Wolfram |title=Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace |journal=Stephen Wolfram Writings |date=10 December 2015 |quote=Then, on Sept. 9, Babbage wrote to Ada, expressing his admiration for her and (famously) describing her as 'Enchantress of Number' and 'my dear and much admired Interpreter'. (Yes, despite what's often quoted, he wrote 'Number' not 'Numbers'.)}}</ref><ref name=enchantress group=lower-alpha>Some writers give it as "Enchantress of Numbers".</ref> In 1843, he wrote to her:

{{Blockquote|Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible its multitudinous Charlatans—every thing in short but the Enchantress of Number.<ref name="Number"/><!--part of quote in Wolfram's text, full quote in picture below, of Ada's letter-->}}

<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Füegi |first1=John |last2=Francis |first2=Jo |date=2015-08-14 |title=Lovelace & Babbage and the creation of the 1843 'notes' |url=https://doi.org/10.1145/2810201 |journal=ACM Inroads |volume=6 |issue=3 |pages=78–86 |doi=10.1145/2810201 |s2cid=7666218 |issn=2153-2184 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200215003909/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/81bb/f32d2642a7a8c6b0a867379a4e9e99d872bc.pdf |archive-date=2020-02-15 |quote="She became the first person known to have crossed the intellectual threshold between conceptualizing computing as only for calculation on the one hand, and on the other hand, computing as we know it today: with wider applications made possible by symbolic substitution."}}</ref>

In 1840, Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the [[University of Turin]] about his Analytical Engine. [[Luigi Menabrea]], a young Italian engineer and the future [[Prime Minister of Italy]], transcribed Babbage's lecture into French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the ''[[Bibliothèque universelle de Genève]]'' in October 1842. Babbage's friend [[Charles Wheatstone]] commissioned Lovelace to translate Menabrea's paper into English.

During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated Menabrea's article.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Velma R. |last1=Huskey |author-link1=Velma Huskey |first2=Harry D. |last2=Huskey |author-link2=Harry Huskey |title=Lady Lovelace and Charles Babbage |journal=Annals of the History of Computing |volume=2 |number=4 |pages=299–329 |date=1980 |doi=10.1109/MAHC.1980.10042|s2cid=2640048 }}</ref> She then augmented the paper with notes, which were added to the translation.{{Sfn|Menabrea|1843}} The translation and notes were then published in the September 1843 edition of Taylor's ''[[Scientific Memoirs]]'' under the [[initialism]] ''AAL''.<ref>{{cite web |last=Green |first=Christopher |url=http://www.yorku.ca/christo/papers/Babbage-CogSci.htm |title=Charles Babbage, the Analytical Engine, and the Possibility of a 19th-Century Cognitive Science |publisher=York University |year=2001 |access-date=2 September 2018}}</ref>

{{anchor|Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine}}

Explaining the Analytical Engine's function was a difficult task; many other scientists did not grasp the concept and the British establishment had shown little interest in it.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=265}} Lovelace's notes even had to explain how the Analytical Engine differed from the original Difference Engine.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=267}} Her work was well received at the time; the scientist [[Michael Faraday]] described himself as a supporter of her writing.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=307}}

Lovelace and Babbage had a minor falling out when the papers were published, when he tried to leave his own statement (criticising the government's treatment of his Engine) as an unsigned preface, which could have been mistakenly interpreted as a joint declaration. When [[Richard Taylor (editor)|Taylor]]'s ''[[Scientific Memoirs]]'' ruled that the statement should be signed, Babbage wrote to Lovelace asking her to withdraw the paper. This was the first that she knew he was leaving it unsigned, and she wrote back refusing to withdraw the paper. The historian [[Benjamin Woolley]] theorised that "His actions suggested he had so enthusiastically sought Ada's involvement, and so happily indulged her&nbsp;... because of her 'celebrated name'."{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|pp=277–80}} Their friendship recovered, and they continued to correspond. On 12 August 1851, when she was dying of cancer, Lovelace wrote to him asking him to be her executor, though this letter did not give him the necessary legal authority. Part of the terrace at Worthy Manor was known as ''Philosopher's Walk;'' it was there that Lovelace and Babbage were reputed to have walked while discussing mathematical principles.{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|p=307}}

===First published computer program===
{{main|Note G}}

[[File:Diagram for the computation of Bernoulli numbers.jpg|thumb|Lovelace's diagram from "[[Note G]]", the first published computer [[algorithm]]|alt=Diagram for the computation by the Engine of the Numbers of Bernoulli]]

The notes, around three times longer than the article itself, are important in the early [[history of computers]], especially since the [[Note G|seventh one]]<ref name="fourmilab.ch">{{Cite web|url=http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html|title=Sketch of ''The Analytical Engine'', with notes upon the Memoir by the Translator|publisher=fourmilab.ch|place=Switzerland|date=October 1842|access-date=28 March 2014}}</ref> described, in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of [[Bernoulli numbers]] using the Analytical Engine, which might have run correctly had it ever been built.<ref name="adaslegacy" /> Though Babbage's personal notes from 1837 to 1840 contain the first programs for the engine,{{sfn|Bromley|1982|p=215}}{{sfn|Bromley|1990|p=89}}<ref>{{cite web|author=Ventana al Conocimiento |url=https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/ada-lovelace-original-and-visionary-but-no-programmer/ |title=Ada Lovelace: Original and Visionary, but No Programmer |date=9 December 2015|archive-date=March 25, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325214741/https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/ada-lovelace-original-and-visionary-but-no-programmer/}}</ref> the [[algorithm]] in Note G is often called the first published computer program. The engine was never completed and so the program was never tested.{{sfn|Kim|Toole|1999}}

In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to [[B. V. Bowden]]'s ''Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines''.<ref>{{Cite book |editor=Bowden, B.V. |date=1953 |title=Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines |url=https://archive.org/details/fasterthanthough00bvbo |publisher=Pitman |place=London |oclc=1053355 |ol=13581728M}}</ref> The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a computer and software.<ref name="adaslegacy">{{cite book |editor1-first= Robin |editor1-last= Hammerman |editor2-first=Andrew L. |editor2-last= Russell| title=Ada's Legacy: Cultures of Computing from the Victorian to the Digital Age |publisher=Morgan & Claypool |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-97000-149-5 |doi=10.1145/2809523|s2cid= 62018931 }}</ref>

====Controversy over contribution====
Based on this work, Lovelace is often called the first computer programmer<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Haugtvedt |first1=Erica |last2=Abata |first2=Duane |date=2021 |title=Ada Lovelace: First Computer Programmer and Hacker? |url=http://peer.asee.org/36646 |journal=ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access |publisher=ASEE Conferences |doi=10.18260/1-2--36646}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Adams |first=Beverley |title=Ada Lovelace: The World's First Computer Programmer |publisher=Pen & Sword History |year=2023 |isbn=9781399082532 |location=Philadelphia, USA}}</ref> and her method has been called the world's first computer program.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gleick |first=James |author-link=James Gleick |year=2011 |title=[[The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood]] |location=London |publisher=Fourth Estate |pages=116–118}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Simonite|first=Tom|url=https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/ada-lovelace-day.html|title=Short Sharp Science: Celebrating Ada Lovelace: the 'world's first programmer'| work=[[New Scientist]] |date=24 March 2009|archive-date=27 March 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090327073325/https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/ada-lovelace-day.html |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Parker|first1=Matt|title=Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension|date=2014|publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux|isbn=978-0-374-27565-5|page=261}}</ref>

Eugene Eric Kim and Betty Alexandra Toole consider it "incorrect" to regard Lovelace as the first computer programmer.{{sfn|Kim|Toole|1999}} Babbage claims credit in his autobiography for the algorithm in Note G,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Babbage |first=Charles |url=https://archive.org/details/passagesfromlife0000babb/mode/2up |title=Passages from the life of a philosopher |date=1864 |publisher=New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press ; Piscataway, N.J. : IEEE Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-8135-2066-7 |quote=We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several, but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernouilli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.}}</ref> and regardless of the extent of Lovelace's contribution to it, she was not the very first person to write a program for the Analytical Engine, as Babbage had written the initial programs for it, although the majority were never published.{{sfn|Kim|Toole|1999}} Bromley notes several dozen sample programs prepared by Babbage between 1837 and 1840, all substantially predating Lovelace's notes.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Bromley |first=Allan G. |date=July–September 1982 |title=Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, 1838 |journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing |url=http://athena.union.edu/~hemmendd/Courses/cs80/an-engine.pdf |pages=197–217 |volume=4 |issue=3 |doi=10.1109/mahc.1982.10028 |s2cid=2285332 |access-date=25 December 2015 |archive-date=26 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210226094829/http://athena.union.edu/~hemmendd/Courses/cs80/an-engine.pdf |url-status=dead }} p. 197.</ref> [[Dorothy K. Stein]] regards Lovelace's notes as "more a reflection of the mathematical uncertainty of the author, the political purposes of the inventor, and, above all, of the social and cultural context in which it was written, than a blueprint for a scientific development".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Stein |first=Dorothy K. |author-link=Dorothy Stein |year=1984 |title=Lady Lovelace's Notes: Technical Text and Cultural Context |journal=Victorian Studies |pages=33–67 |volume=28 |issue=1}} p. 34.</ref>

[[Allan Bromley (historian)|Allan G. Bromley]], in the 1990 article ''Difference and Analytical Engines'':
{{Blockquote|All but one of the programs cited in her notes had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier. The exception was prepared by Babbage for her, although she did detect a "bug" in it. Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bromley |first=Allan G. |author-link=Allan G. Bromley |contribution=Difference and Analytical Engines |title=Computing Before Computers |editor-first=William |editor-last=Aspray |publisher=Iowa State University Press |location=Ames |pages=59–98 |chapter-url=http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CBC-Ch-02.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/CBC-Ch-02.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |date=1990 |isbn=0-8138-0047-1}} p. 89.</ref>}}

Bruce Collier wrote that Lovelace "made a considerable contribution to publicizing the Analytical Engine, but there is no evidence that she advanced the design or theory of it in any way".<ref name="Collier 1990 p.">{{cite book |last=Collier |first=Bruce |title=The Little Engines that Could've: The Calculating Machines of Charles Babbage |date=1990 |publisher=[[Garland Science]]  |isbn=0-8240-0043-9 |page=181}}</ref>

[[Doron Swade]] has said that Ada only published the first computer program instead of actually writing it, but agrees that she was the only person to see the potential of the analytical engine as a machine capable of expressing entities other than quantities.<ref>{{cite speech |last=Swade |first=Doron |author-link=Doron Swade |title=Charles Babbage and Difference Engine No. 2 |event=Talks at Google |date=12 May 2008 |location=Mountain View, CA |publisher=Talks at Google via YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K5p_tBcrd0&t=36m29s | archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211122/7K5p_tBcrd0| archive-date=2021-11-22 | url-status=live|access-date=29 November 2018}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

In his book, ''Idea Makers'', [[Stephen Wolfram]] defends Lovelace's contributions. While acknowledging that Babbage wrote several unpublished algorithms for the Analytical Engine prior to Lovelace's notes, Wolfram argues that "there's nothing as sophisticated—or as clean—as Ada's computation of the Bernoulli numbers. Babbage certainly helped and commented on Ada's work, but she was definitely the driver of it." Wolfram then suggests that Lovelace's main achievement was to distill from Babbage's correspondence "a clear exposition of the abstract operation of the machine—something which Babbage never did".<ref name="Wolfram">{{cite book |last=Wolfram |first=Stephen |title=Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People |date=2016 |publisher=Wolfram Media |isbn=978-1-57955-003-5 |pages=45–98}}</ref>

===Insight into potential of computing devices===

In her notes, Ada Lovelace emphasised the difference between the Analytical Engine and previous calculating machines, particularly its ability to be programmed to solve problems of any complexity.{{Sfn|Toole|1998|pp=175–82}} She realised the potential of the device extended far beyond mere number crunching. In her notes, she wrote:

{{Blockquote|[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.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lovelace|first1=Ada|last2=Menabrea|first2=Luigi|title=Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq.|year=1842|journal=[[Scientific Memoirs]]|publisher=Richard Taylor|page=694}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Hooper|first=Rowan|url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22385-ada-lovelace-my-brain-is-more-than-merely-mortal.html|title=Ada Lovelace: My brain is more than merely mortal| work=[[New Scientist]] |date=16 October 2012|access-date=16 October 2012}}</ref>}}

This analysis was an important development from previous ideas about the capabilities of computing devices and anticipated the implications of modern computing one hundred years before they were realised. [[Walter Isaacson]] ascribes Ada's insight regarding the application of computing to ''any'' process based on logical symbols to an observation about textiles: "When she saw some [[Jacquard machine|mechanical looms]] that used [[punched cards|punchcards]] to direct the weaving of beautiful [[pattern]]s, it reminded her of how Babbage's engine used punched cards to make calculations."<ref name="Isaacson">{{cite web|url=http://fortune.com/2014/09/18/walter-isaacson-the-women-of-eniac/ |title=Walter Isaacson on the Women of ENIAC |last=Isaacson |first=Walter | authorlink=Walter Isaacson |date=18 September 2014 |work=[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]}}</ref> This insight is seen as significant by writers such as Betty Toole and Benjamin Woolley, as well as the programmer [[John Graham-Cumming]], whose project Plan 28 has the aim of constructing the first complete Analytical Engine.{{Sfn|Toole|1998|pp=2–3, 14}}{{Sfn|Woolley|1999|pp=272–77}}<ref>{{cite web |last=Ken t|first=Leo |url=http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/8947/the-10-year-plan-to-build-babbages-analytical-engine |title=The 10-year-plan to build Babbage's Analytical Engine |publisher=Humans Invent |date=17 September 2012 |access-date=16 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121014123843/http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/8947/the-10-year-plan-to-build-babbages-analytical-engine |archive-date=14 October 2012 |url-status=usurped}}</ref>

According to the historian of computing and Babbage specialist [[Doron Swade]]:

<blockquote>Ada saw something that Babbage in some sense failed to see. In Babbage's world his engines were bound by number...What Lovelace saw...was that number could represent entities other than quantity. So once you had a machine for manipulating numbers, if those numbers represented other things, letters, musical notes, then the machine could manipulate symbols of which number was one instance, according to rules. It is this fundamental transition from a machine which is a number cruncher to a machine for manipulating symbols according to rules that is the fundamental transition from calculation to computation—to general-purpose computation—and looking back from the present high ground of modern computing, if we are looking and sifting history for that transition, then that transition was made explicitly by Ada in that 1843 paper.{{Sfn|Fuegi|Francis|2003}}</blockquote>

''[[Note G]]'' also contains Lovelace's dismissal of [[artificial intelligence]]. She wrote that "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to ''originate'' anything. 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." This objection has been the subject of much debate and rebuttal, for example by [[Alan Turing]] in his paper "[[Computing Machinery and Intelligence]]".<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CEMYUU_HFMAC&pg=PA67 |journal=The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as the Hallmark of Intelligence |editor=Stuart Shieber |title=Computing Machinery and Intelligence |author=Turing, Alan |pages=67–104 |publisher=MIT Press |year=2004|isbn=978-0-262-26542-3 }}</ref> Most modern computer scientists argue that this view is outdated and that computer software can develop in ways that cannot necessarily be anticipated by programmers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Natale |first1=Simone |last2=Henrickson |first2=Leah |date=2022-03-04 |title=The Lovelace effect: Perceptions of creativity in machines |url=https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221077278 |journal=New Media & Society |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=1909–1926 |doi=10.1177/14614448221077278 |s2cid=247267997 |issn=1461-4448 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220127000000/https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221077278 |archive-date=27 January 2022 |access-date=9 March 2022 |url-status=live }} [https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/182906/ Alt URL]</ref>

===Distinction between mechanism and logical structure===
Lovelace recognized the difference between the details of the computing mechanism, as covered in an 1834 article on the Difference Engine,<ref name=edinburgh1834>{{Cite journal|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Review/Volume_59/Babbage%27s_Calculating_Engine |last=Lardner|first= D.|title=Babbage's calculating engine|journal= Edinburgh Review|date=July 1834|pages= 263–327|quote= In WikiSource and also reprinted in ''The works of Charles Babbage,'' Vol 2, p.119ff|access-date=11 October 2022}}</ref>
and the logical structure of the Analytical Engine, on which the article she was reviewing dwelt. She noted that different specialists might be required in each area.

<blockquote>The [1834 article] chiefly treats it under its mechanical aspect, entering but slightly into the mathematical principles of which that engine is the representative, but giving, in considerable length, many details of the mechanism and contrivances by means of which it tabulates the various orders of differences. M. Menabrea, on the contrary, exclusively developes the analytical view; taking it for granted that mechanism is able to perform certain processes, but without attempting to explain how; and devoting his whole attention to explanations and illustrations of the manner in which analytical laws can be so arranged and combined as to bring every branch of that vast subject within the grasp of the assumed powers of mechanism. It is obvious that, in the invention of a calculating engine, these two branches of the subject are equally essential fields of investigation... They are indissolubly connected, though so different in their intrinsic nature, that perhaps the same mind might not be likely to prove equally profound or successful in both.<ref name="fourmilab.ch" />{{rp|Note A}}
</blockquote>