Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, was a visionary British mathematician and writer, widely recognized for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Despite living in the early 19th century, Lovelace possessed an…
Key facts
- Role
- Mathematician and Writer (primarily known for her work in conceptual computer science)
- Nationality
- British
- Born
- 1815
- Died
- 1852
Notable quotes
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. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.
Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage's Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. 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 algebraical notation, were arrangements made accordingly.
We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.