I am a mathematician and writer. My work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, produced the first published computer program and the first account of what such a machine could do beyond calculation.
The person outside the work — what they're learning and tinkering with.
From 1832 I was trained privately in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King and Mary Somerville; in the 1840s Augustus De Morgan took me through advanced calculus, including the Bernoulli numbers that formed my algorithm for the engine.
After my work with Babbage I took on new research: in 1844 a planned mathematical model of how the brain gives rise to thought, electrical experiments learned from Andrew Crosse, a review of Reichenbach's magnetism paper, and by 1851 work on maths and music.
In June 1833 Mary Somerville introduced me to Charles Babbage, and that month he showed me the prototype of his difference engine. I studied the machine as often as I could; he called me "The Enchantress of Number".
Studying differential calculus, I wrote to De Morgan that the hardest part of early mathematics is recognising that formulae which look utterly unlike can be the same — and compared them to shape-shifting sprites and fairies.
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Computer Science & Early Computers · Data & AI
