Ada Lovelace
In plain wordsA 19th-century English mathematician who published the first program written for a planned mechanical computer, and who argued that such a machine could only do what it was told.
English mathematician whose 1843 notes gave the most complete account written in her lifetime of the Analytical Engine, Charles Babbage's design for a card-programmed mechanical computer that was never built. The notes accompanied her English translation of Luigi Menabrea's article on the engine and ran to about three times its length. Note G sets out a step-by-step procedure for computing Bernoulli numbers, often called the first published computer program, and other notes foresaw that the engine could manipulate symbols other than numbers, such as musical notes. Her remark that the engine 'has no pretensions whatever to originate anything' was answered by Alan TuringAlan Turing, prop. n.: A British mathematician who worked out what computers can do in principle, helped break German codes in the Second World War, and proposed the best-known test of machine intelligence. in his 1950 paperComputing Machinery and Intelligence, prop. n.: Alan Turing's 1950 essay asking whether machines can think. It proposed a conversation test in place of that question, answered objections to thinking machines and suggested that machines might learn like children. as Lady Lovelace's objection, the source of the Lovelace objectionLovelace objection, n.: The argument, traced to Ada Lovelace in 1843, that computers cannot be truly creative because they can only do what they have been programmed to do. to machine creativity. The programming language Ada and Ada Lovelace Day are named after her.
Usage note
Historians debate how much of the notes' mathematics was hers and how much Babbage's; Babbage had drafted earlier, unpublished programs for the engine, so 'first programmer' claims need that qualification.
Related
- Lovelace objectionLovelace objection, n.: The argument, traced to Ada Lovelace in 1843, that computers cannot be truly creative because they can only do what they have been programmed to do.
- Computing Machinery and IntelligenceComputing Machinery and Intelligence, prop. n.: Alan Turing's 1950 essay asking whether machines can think. It proposed a conversation test in place of that question, answered objections to thinking machines and suggested that machines might learn like children.
- Alan TuringAlan Turing, prop. n.: A British mathematician who worked out what computers can do in principle, helped break German codes in the Second World War, and proposed the best-known test of machine intelligence.
- algorithmalgorithm, n.: A precise, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or doing a task, like a recipe a computer can follow. In the news, 'the algorithm' often means software that ranks what you see online.
Sources
- Lovelace, A. A. (1843). Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, by L. F. Menabrea, with notes by the translator. Scientific Memoirs 3: 666–731.
Mentioned in
Lovelace objectionLovelace objection, n.: The argument, traced to Ada Lovelace in 1843, that computers cannot be truly creative because they can only do what they have been programmed to do.