After the engine — a calculus of the nervous system
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.
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Formulae change shape like sprites and fairies
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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I learned advanced calculus from Somerville and De Morgan
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.
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Seeing the difference engine set my course in 1833
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".
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I refused to withdraw my paper over Babbage's preface
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.
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Exposition is a contribution — the Note G debate
Historians still argue how much of Note G was mine. My position: making the engine's abstract operation clear, and driving the Bernoulli computation, is real work in computer science, not publicity.
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How I explained a machine its own era could not see
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.
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Mechanism and logical structure need different minds
Reviewing Menabrea's paper against an 1834 article on the Difference Engine, I separated a computing machine's mechanism from its logical structure and argued both are equally essential fields of engineering and science research.
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The engine has no pretensions to originate anything
In Note G I stated the limit of the Analytical Engine: it does what we know how to order it to do and cannot anticipate new truths. Alan Turing later named this "Lady Lovelace's Objection" in his paper on machine intelligence.
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Numbers can stand for anything — so machines can too
In my 1843 notes I argued the Analytical Engine differed from all earlier calculating machines: programmed, it could solve problems of any complexity, and because numbers can represent letters or musical notes it could manipulate any symbols by rules.
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