Talks at Google
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1:01:04 · 10K views · May 12, 2008
Historian Doron Swade tells the story of Charles Babbage's quest to build the Difference Engine and the construction of Difference Engine No. 2 at the Science Museum. The talk covers Babbage's motivation, his machines and Ada Lovelace's insight into the Analytical Engine.
HN commenters link it as a source on Babbage's machines, especially for the section around minute 36 on Ada Lovelace's insight beyond numeric computation.
6 comments from Hacker News
Some of the claims made about Ada are certainly mistaken, but there are also good arguments for genuine, important contributions. See, for example, Babbage historian Doron Swade's discussion of her insight into potential applications of the Analytical Engine beyond numeric calculation (beginning at 36:30): this video By the way, a very good biography of Grace Hopper was published a few years ago: [LINK]
Ahh yes please do go through my posts about how brains of women and men are not the same... might churn your stomach a bit. :) Again some logic please... the man who created the machines would not know how to run them? Since you love to quote wikipedia you could have scrolled down a little on the same page and seeen this - Allan G. Bromley, in the 1990 essay Difference and Analytical Engines, wrote,[71] All but one of the programs cited in her notes had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier. The exception was prepared by Babbage for her, although she did detect a 'bug' in it. Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so. Blue plaque to Lovelace in St. James's Square, London In his PhD thesis, Bruce Collier, who went on to write a biography of Babbage, claimed: It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that Babbage wrote the 'Notes' to Menabrea's paper, but for reasons of his own encouraged the illusion in the minds of Ada and the public that they were authored by her. It is no exaggeration to say that she was a manic depressive with the most amazing delusions about her own talents, and a rather shallow understanding of both Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine There is a google talk about Babbage's machines and the speaker also talked about Ada at the 36 min mark -- this video Further links for your blithe mind to perus
Lovelace's insight was understanding that it was possible to represent symbols using numbers (letters, notes of music) and that therefore a machine that could perform calculation could also perform computation [0]. That's something Babbage didn't anticipate (or at least, didn't express it publicly). Lovelace did. Now this article, while true, will sadly get flagged any minute now. EDIT: Wow, I had not seen the rest of the site and the alarming white suppremacist content. [0] this video
Women were never in computing in the sense imagined by the author. The manual "computers" and early patch-cord "programmers" he mentions carried out instructions by wrote. Instructions created by men. Women left the field when these jobs became obsolete. Hopper is a notable exception. Lovelace, not so much.[1] Women did a lot of QA through the aughties. Again, this work was automated. [1] this video
Babbage created the machine and he would not know how to run it? He would not know how to program it? The absurdity of this is astounding. Babbage was the first programmer. There is a google talk about Babbage's machines and the speaker also talked about Ada at the 36 min mark -- this video