Melvin's digital garden

Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist

based on letters from the Lovelace-Byron archive at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford

AAL timeline

AAL’s mathematical papers

Sketch of the Analytic Engine

Quotes from AAL’s notes at the end of her translation:

But the science of operations, as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of itself, and has its own abstract truth and value; just as logic has its own peculiar truth and value, independently of the subjects to which we may apply its reasonings and processes.

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.

We may say most aptly, that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.

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