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KF5JRV > TECH 07.05.16 12:37l 78 Lines 5175 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: First Publish Computer Programs
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The First Published Computer Programs
In October 1843, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, daughter
of Lord Byron, translated Menabrea’s paper, "Notions sur la
machine analytique de M. Charles Babbage" (1842). Her "Sketch of the
Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage . . . with Notes by the
Translator" published in Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions
of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies 3 (1843): 666-731 plus
1 folding chart, was the first edition in English of the the first published
account of Babbage’s Analytical Engine, and, more significantly, of its
logical design.
In 1840 Babbage traveled to Torino to present to a group of Italian scientists
an account of the Engine. Babbage’s talk, complete with drawings, models and
mechanical notations, emphasized the Engine’s signal feature: its ability to
guide its own operations. It also included the first computer programs though
Babbage did not use that word. In attendance at Babbage’s lecture was the
young Italian mathematician Luigi Federico Menabrea (later Prime Minister of
Italy), who prepared from his notes an account of the principles of the
Analytical Engine, which he published in French in 1842.
In keeping with the more general nature and immaterial status of the
Analytical Engine, Menabrea’s account dealt little with mechanical details.
Instead he described the functional organization and mathematical operation
of this more flexible and powerful invention. To illustrate its capabilities,
he presented several charts or tables of the steps through which the machine
would be directed to go in performing calculations and finding numerical
solutions to algebraic equations. These steps were the instructions the
engine’s operator would punch in coded form on cards to be fed into the
machine; hence, the charts constituted the first computer programs.
Menabrea’s charts were taken from those Babbage brought to Torino to
illustrate his talks there (Stein, Ada: A Life and Legacy, 92).
Menabrea’s paper was translated into English by Babbage’s close friend Ada,
Countess of Lovelace, daughter of the poet Byron and a talented mathematician
in her own right. At Babbage’s suggestion, Lady Lovelace added seven
explanatory notes to her translation, which run about three times the length
of the original. Her annotated translation has been called “the most
important paper in the history of digital computing before modern timesö
(Bromley, “Introductionö in Babbage, Henry Prevost, Babbage’s Calculating
Engines, xv). As Babbage never published a detailed description of the
Analytical Engine, Ada’s translation of Menabrea’s paper, with its lengthy
explanatory notes, represents the most complete contemporary account in
English of this much-misunderstood machine.
Babbage supplied Ada with algorithms for the solution of various problems,
which she illustrated in her notes in the form of charts detailing the
stepwise sequence of events as the machine progressed through a string of
instructions input from punched cards (Swade, The Cogwheel Brain, 165). This
was the first published example of a computer “program,ö though neither Ada
nor Babbage used this term. She also expanded upon Babbage’s general views
of the Analytical Engine as a symbol-manipulating device rather than a mere
processor of numbers, suggesting that it might act upon other things besides
number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be
expressed by those of the abstract science of operations. . . . 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 (p. 694) . . . Many persons who are not
conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because the business of the
engine is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its
processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than
algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and
combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other
general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical
notation, were provisions made accordingly (p. 713).
Much has been written concerning what mathematical abilities Ada may have
possessed. Study of the published correspondence between her and Babbage (see
Toole 1992) is not especially flattering either to her personality or
mathematical talents: it shows that while Ada was personally enamored of her
own mathematical prowess, she was in reality no more than a talented novice
who at times required Babbage’s coaching. Their genuine friendship aside,
Babbage’s motives for encouraging Ada’s involvement in his work are not hard
to discern. As Lord Byron’s only legitimate daughter, Ada was an extraordinary
celebrity, and as the wife of a prominent aristocrat she was in a position to
act as patron to Babbage and his engines (though she never in fact did so).
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