The Inspirational Engine.

At 18, Ada Lovelace met Charles Babbage, who invited her to study his difference engine. By observing what Babbage had designed and by asking him questions, she soon became an expert on the inventor's work. When Babbage changed his plans and began to design his analytical engine, Lovelace saw tremendous potential in the machine. She understood it better than most other people older and more experienced than she.

The Italian mathematician Menabrea had attempted to explain how the analytical engine would work in a presentation at a scientific conference in Vienna. Lovelace was aked to translate his paper into English. While doing so, she added footnotes and explanatory sections which greatly enhanced the original. By the time she was finished, the paper was three times as long as Menabrea's, and much more useful.

Babbage was very pleased. He published and distributed Lovelace's work, modestly signed with only her initials "A.A.L." Although this paper was the summit of her career, she felt it was unbecoming for a woman of her social class to publish anything so "unfeminine." It was nearly 30 years before the identity of "A.A.L." was commonly known.

Could Computers Compose?

Throughout her career as a mathematician, Lovelace was often drawn by her love of music. She had shown much promise as a young woman and many of her friends expected her to pursue musical studies. As she explored the powers of the analytical engine, she thought about the potential of such machines to compose music. Now, a century after she predicted it, her dream has come true. Computers are composing music!

Off to the Races

Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace had another common interest besides computers. Together, they had come up with what they considered an "infallible system" for beating the odds at the horse races. Babbage needed money to fund the construction of his engine; Lovelace was simply a compulsive gambler. Their system did not work, and both of them were disgraced by massive gambling debts and associations with "shady" bookmakers.

ADA: A New Language

The computer language, ADA, was commissioned in the late 1970's by the United States Department of Defense. Based on the language PASCAL, ADA is a general-purpose language designed to be readable and easily maintained. It is efficient for machines, yet easy to use. It was intended to become a standard language to replace the many specialized computer languages now in use.

HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS VOL. II                  ©1993 AIMS Education Foundation