college/Spring-2024/CS-1011/Assignment-1/Video/Assets/Media/README.org

* Video Files

Videos were created by [[file:../../../README.org::*Members][Sean West]] using generative AI

** Oscar's Video Prompts

- Video 1
  - Ada Lovelace (1815--1852), the Victorian-era mathematician daughter of
    the Romantic poet Lord Byron. Ada Lovelace had a privileged existence
    but lived in a world where girls were limited in the subjects they were
    taught, where young women were excluded from universities and where
    gender stereotypes were rigidly enforced.

- Video 2

  - The aim of education for young women born into the aristocracy in the
    17th and 18th centuries was to make them as marriageable as possible.

- Video 3

  - Therefore, young women were typically schooled at home, by governesses
    or carefully selected tutors, in subjects such as languages, literature,
    and music.

- Video 4

  - Following the separation of her parents shortly after her birth, Ada was
    raised by her mother in an environment that ran counter to the
    conventions of the day.

- Video 5

  - Against tradition, Ada was schooled rigorously in mathematics and
    science, on the basis of her mother's belief that this would protect or
    insulate her against the madness Annabella believed to possess Ada's
    father, who she believed (perhaps correctly) to be a dissolute and
    depraved individual as well as a romantic literary genius.

- Video 6

  - Ada possessed natural talents for language and numeracy but as a young
    woman of her time, she was excluded from attending university.

- Video 7

  - Instead she received further education and tutoring from a variety of
    individuals, such as Mary Somerville, Augustus de Morgan and, perhaps
    most notably, the inventor of the world's first theoretical computer ---
    the “Analytical Engine --- Charles Babbage.

- Video 8

  - Ada Lovelace, as a daughter of the 19th century, was certainly born into
    privilege and a conventional “feminine” education would have been her
    birthright.

- Video 9

  - However, while privileged and wealthy, Ada's parents did not fit the
    stereotypes of the era, nor was her life to follow convention.

- Video 10

  - Ada's mother, Anne Isabella, known as Annabella, was intellectually
    gifted and had received, unusually for a young woman of the time, an
    education that included science and mathematics.

- Video 11

  - As a consequence of her sharp mind (paired, presumably with her family
    wealth), Annabella was a particularly appealing target for the romantic
    attentions of the poet Byron, who named her his “Princess of the
    Parallelograms.”

- Video 12

  - However, this was not a marriage of like minds or shared values, and
    whether intended or unintended, a consequence of the union of Annabella
    and Byron was the arrival of Ada Lovelace.

** Price's Video Prompts


*** Analytical Engine while she was alive

- Video 1

  - Babbage never published serious account of Difference Engine or the
    Analytical Engine

- Video 2

  - Babbage talked about the Analytical Engine in Turin in 1840 and a
    man named Luigi Menabrea took notes of his lecture

  - Menabrea went on to publish the paper in French in 1842

- Video 3

  - Ada saw the paper and chose to translate it to English and submit it
    to a British publication in 1843

  - Ada took extensive notes of her own to add to the translation, the
    notes ended up being longer than the translation itself

- Video 4

  - Ada exchanged /many/ letters with Babbage, she felt she was
    explaining Babbage's work, not discovering something

  - She only wanted to validate things with Babbage, got annoyed when
    Babbage tried to make his own corrections to her manuscript

- Video 5

  - She originally wasn't going to sign the translation or notes, she
    was convinced to do so by William King (her husband)

  - Signed it "AAL"

  - Saw herself primarily as an interpreter of Babbage's work

  - Finished notes and translation at the end of July 1843

- Video 6

  - Wrote to Babbage asking for him to join in bringing the Analytical
    Engine to fruition with her as a sort of CEO after writing her
    translation --- she seemingly became wholly enraptured by the
    machine

- Video 7

  - Unfortunately for Ada her health began failing her and the
    Analytical Engine had to be sidelined

  - She died of cancer in November 27, 1852 at the age of 36

*** Rediscovery of Her Work After Death

:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: rediscovery-of-her-work-after-death
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- Video 8

  - In 1953 Bertram Bowden rediscovered Ada's work

  - Researching for his book /Faster than Thought/ about computer he
    came across Ada's granddaughter who told him about Ada and showed
    him some of Ada's papers

- Video 9

  - As more research was done difference engines and mechanical
    computer's were researched and inevitably so too was Babbage's
    Analytical Engine

  - Remember, Babbage's Analytical Engine's primary source was Ada's
    translation and notes she wrote about it

*** Why is Ada important?

:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: why-is-ada-important
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- Video 10

  - Ada had some thoughts of what the Analytical Engine should be
    capable of --- namely general computation

  - She asked Babbage many times on how to achieve this general
    computation and distilled his likely extremely detailed answers to a
    clear explanation of the operation of the Analytical Machine

- Video 11

  - She actually published and simplified ideas about the Analytical
    Engine --- something that Babbage never did

  - If you scream and nothing hears it, did you really scream?

- Videos 12 & 13

  - Ada had a more developed abstract understanding of the Analytical
    Machine than Babbage possessed due to her work in creating her notes
    and translation about the Analytical Engine

  - Due to this more developed abstract understanding, she had ideas of
    general/universal computation which are the hallmark of modern day
    computers

- Video 14

  - Babbage only saw the Analytical Engine as a more efficient way of
    producing mathematical tables and just so happened to design a
    universal computer

- Video 15

  - When writing about the Analytical Engine, Ada was trying to explain
    it as clearly as possible

  - To do this she had to look at the machine in a more abstract sense
    and this resulted in her seeing the machine as a gateway to
    universal computation

- Video 16

  - She was seemingly the first recorded person to have ideas of
    universal computation in regards to machines

- Video 17

  - This is the most important element, the entirety of the modern world
    are built on the back of universal computation

*** Is it possible Ada could have discovered modern computing had her health not failed?

- Video 21

  - It's not far-fetched to say that if Ada had not died so early of
    cancer she likely would have played a major role in a mechanical
    machine capable of universal computation

- Video 18

  - After creating the machine it's not a stretch at all that she might
    then create a new machine (or perhaps even the first machine) as an
    electromechanical device and thus being much closer to modern
    computers

- Video 20

  - She and had a friend working with electronic communications, Charles
    Wheatstone who was involved with the creation of the electric
    telegraph

- Video 19

  - Ideas around Binary were beginning to show up around Ada's time, but
    it wasn't well known