* Ada Lovelace Contribution Notes [2024-01-31 Wed 15:17]

- For a group project detailing an important person in Computer Science history
- Based upon Stephen Wolfram's writing found [[https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/][here]]

** Analytical Engine while she was alive

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

- 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
- 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?

- 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
- 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?
- 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
- Babbage only saw the Analytical Engine as a more efficient way of producing mathematical
  tables and just so happened to design a universal computer
- 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
- She was seemingly the first recorded person to have ideas of universal computation in regards
  to machines
  - 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?

- 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
- 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
- She and had a friend working with electronic communications, Charles Wheatstone who was
  involved with the creation of the electric telegraph
- Ideas around Binary were beginning to show up around Ada's time, but it wasn't well known