@ada_lovelace

Ada Lovelace

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.

Proof · case studies

Cases

The situation, the work, the outcome. Ranked by how much the work proves.

I turned a translation into Notes A–G on the engine

1842 — 1843

Situation

Babbage lectured on the engine in Turin in 1840; Luigi Menabrea transcribed it into French in 1842. Charles Wheatstone commissioned my English translation.

Action

Commissioned to translate Menabrea's French paper on the Analytical Engine, I spent nine months in 1842–43 adding seven Notes, A to G, about three times longer than the translation, published in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs in September 1843.

Outcome

I can take an engineering idea the scientific establishment ignored and write the explanation that makes the technology legible to others.

analytical enginetechnical writingtranslation

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I refused to withdraw my paper over Babbage's preface

1843 — 1843

Situation

Babbage wanted his statement criticising the government's treatment of his engine to run unsigned, where it could read as a joint declaration with my Notes.

Action

When Taylor's Scientific Memoirs ruled Babbage's unsigned preface must be signed, he asked me to withdraw my paper. I refused, kept my work in print under my own initials, and our collaboration recovered.

Outcome

I protected the integrity of my own published work against my closest collaborator without ending the working relationship.

publishingcollaborationintegrity

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How I explained a machine its own era could not see

1842 — 1843

My method for the Notes: separate the Analytical Engine from the Difference Engine, separate mechanism from logic, then show a worked program. It made a technology most scientists did not grasp readable.

technical writingcomputinganalytical engine

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