Lovelace & Babbage and the Creation of the 1843 'Notes'
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Computer History – the Pitfalls of Past Futures
Research Collection Working Paper Computer history – The pitfalls of past futures Author(s): Gugerli, David; Zetti, Daniela Publication Date: 2019 Permanent Link: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000385896 Rights / License: In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use. ETH Library TECHNIKGESCHICHTE DAVID GUGERLI DANIELA ZETTI COMPUTER HISTORY – THE PITFALLS OF PAST FUTURES PREPRINTS ZUR KULTURGESCHICHTE DER TECHNIK // 2019 #33 WWW.TG.ETHZ.CH © BEI DEN AUTOREN Gugerli, Zetti/Computer History Preprints zur Kulturgeschichte der Technik #33 Abstract The historicization of the computer in the second half of the 20th century can be understood as the effect of the inevitable changes in both its technological and narrative development. What interests us is how past futures and therefore history were stabilized. The development, operation, and implementation of machines and programs gave rise to a historicity of the field of computing. Whenever actors have been grouped into communities – for example, into industrial and academic developer communities – new orderings have been constructed historically. Such orderings depend on the ability to refer to archival and published documents and to develop new narratives based on them. Professional historians are particularly at home in these waters – and nevertheless can disappear into the whirlpool of digital prehistory. Toward the end of the 1980s, the first critical review of the literature on the history of computers thus offered several programmatic suggestions. It is one of the peculiar coincidences of history that the future should rear its head again just when the history of computers was flourishing as a result of massive methodological and conceptual input. -
Turing's Influence on Programming — Book Extract from “The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra”
Turing's Influence on Programming | Book extract from \The Dawn of Software Engineering: from Turing to Dijkstra" Edgar G. Daylight∗ Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands [email protected] Abstract Turing's involvement with computer building was popularized in the 1970s and later. Most notable are the books by Brian Randell (1973), Andrew Hodges (1983), and Martin Davis (2000). A central question is whether John von Neumann was influenced by Turing's 1936 paper when he helped build the EDVAC machine, even though he never cited Turing's work. This question remains unsettled up till this day. As remarked by Charles Petzold, one standard history barely mentions Turing, while the other, written by a logician, makes Turing a key player. Contrast these observations then with the fact that Turing's 1936 paper was cited and heavily discussed in 1959 among computer programmers. In 1966, the first Turing award was given to a programmer, not a computer builder, as were several subsequent Turing awards. An historical investigation of Turing's influence on computing, presented here, shows that Turing's 1936 notion of universality became increasingly relevant among programmers during the 1950s. The central thesis of this paper states that Turing's in- fluence was felt more in programming after his death than in computer building during the 1940s. 1 Introduction Many people today are led to believe that Turing is the father of the computer, the father of our digital society, as also the following praise for Martin Davis's bestseller The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing1 suggests: At last, a book about the origin of the computer that goes to the heart of the story: the human struggle for logic and truth. -
Biographies of Computer Scientists
1 Charles Babbage 26 December 1791 (London, UK) – 18 October 1871 (London, UK) Life and Times Charles Babbage was born into a wealthy family, and started his mathematics education very early. By . 1811, when he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, he found that he knew more mathematics then his professors. He moved to Peterhouse, Cambridge from where he graduated in 1814. However, rather than come second to his friend Herschel in the final examinations, Babbage decided not to compete for an honors degree. In 1815 he co-founded the Analytical Society dedicated to studying continental reforms of Newton's formulation of “The Calculus”. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society in 1820. In 1821 Babbage started work on his Difference Engine designed to accurately compile tables. Babbage received government funding to construct an actual machine, but they stopped the funding in 1832 when it became clear that its construction was running well over-budget George Schuetz completed a machine based on the design of the Difference Engine in 1854. On completing the design of the Difference Engine, Babbage started work on the Analytical Engine capable of more general symbolic manipulations. The design of the Analytical Engine was complete in 1856, but a complete machine would not be constructed for over a century. Babbage's interests were wide. It is claimed that he invented cow-catchers for railway engines, the uniform postal rate, a means of recognizing lighthouses. He was also interested in locks and ciphers. He was politically active and wrote many treatises. One of the more famous proposed the banning of street musicians. -
A Bibliography of Publications By, and About, Charles Babbage
A Bibliography of Publications by, and about, Charles Babbage Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 USA Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (Internet) WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ 08 March 2021 Version 1.24 Abstract -analogs [And99b, And99a]. This bibliography records publications of 0 [Bar96, CK01b]. 0-201-50814-1 [Ano91c]. Charles Babbage. 0-262-01121-2 [Ano91c]. 0-262-12146-8 [Ano91c, Twe91]. 0-262-13278-8 [Twe93]. 0-262-14046-2 [Twe92]. 0-262-16123-0 [Ano91c]. 0-316-64847-7 [Cro04b, CK01b]. Title word cross-reference 0-571-17242-3 [Bar96]. 1 [Bab97, BRG+87, Mar25, Mar86, Rob87a, #3 [Her99]. Rob87b, Tur91]. 1-85196-005-8 [Twe89b]. 100th [Sen71]. 108-bit [Bar00]. 1784 0 [Tee94]. 1 [Bab27d, Bab31c, Bab15]. [MB89]. 1792/1871 [Ynt77]. 17th [Hun96]. 108 000 [Bab31c, Bab15]. 108000 [Bab27d]. 1800s [Mar08]. 1800s-Style [Mar08]. 1828 1791 + 200 = 1991 [Sti91]. $19.95 [Dis91]. [Bab29a]. 1835 [Van83]. 1851 $ $ $21.50 [Mad86]. 25 [O’H82]. 26.50 [Bab51a, CK89d, CK89i, She54, She60]. $ [Enr80a, Enr80b]. $27.95 [L.90]. 28 1852 [Bab69]. 1853 [She54, She60]. 1871 $ [Hun96]. $35.00 [Ano91c]. 37.50 [Ano91c]. [Ano71b, Ano91a]. 1873 [Dod00]. 18th $45.00 [Ano91c]. q [And99a, And99b]. 1 2 [Bab29a]. 1947 [Ano48]. 1961 Adam [O’B93]. Added [Bab16b, Byr38]. [Pan63, Wil64]. 1990 [CW91]. 1991 Addison [Ano91c]. Addison-Wesley [Ano90, GG92a]. 19th [Ano91c]. Addition [Bab43a]. Additions [Gre06, Gre01, GST01]. -
Women in Computing
History of Computing CSE P590A (UW) PP190/290-3 (UCB) CSE 290 291 (D00) Women in Computing Katherine Deibel University of Washington [email protected] 1 An Amazing Photo Philadelphia Inquirer, "Your Neighbors" article, 8/13/1957 2 Diversity Crisis in Computer Science Percentage of CS/IS Bachelor Degrees Awarded to Women National Center for Education Statistics, 2001 3 Goals of this talk ! Highlight the many accomplishments made by women in the computing field ! Learn their stories, both good and bad 4 Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace ! Translated and extended Menabrea’s article on Babbage’s Analytical Engine ! Predicted computers could be used for music and graphics ! Wrote the first algorithm— how to compute Bernoulli numbers ! Developed notions of looping and subroutines 5 Garbage In, Garbage Out The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. — Ada Lovelace, Note G 6 On her genius and insight If you are as fastidious about the acts of your friendship as you are about those of your pen, I much fear I shall equally lose your friendship and your Notes. I am very reluctant to return your admirable & philosophic 'Note A.' Pray do not alter it… All this was impossible for you to know by intuition and the more I read your notes the more surprised I am at them and regret not having earlier explored so rich a vein of the noblest metal. -
Who Invented the Computer?
Who Invented the Computer? AP This story comes from VOA Special English, Voice of America's daily news and information service for English learners. Read the story and then do the activities in the worksheet at the end. Millions of us use them every day. Some are so large they have to sit on the floor. Others are so small that they fit in our hand. They help us with mathematical problems, store our music and pictures, and are needed to search the Internet. They are, of course, computers. So try this experiment. Ask a friend or just someone you see on the street this question: “Who invented the computer?” Some people cannot live without computers, but we know very little about who invented them. So who did it? Are you ready? The answer is … we do not know for sure. Many people who know a lot about information technology might say computers were invented by Alan Turing. He was a British mathematician who helped solve coded messages from Germany during World War Two. Many people consider him the “father of computer science.” But to find the first person who thought he could make a computing device, we have to go back one hundred eighty years to a man named Charles Babbadge. He also was British. Special English is part of VOA Learning English: voanews.com/learningenglish | December 2011 | 1 Recently, researchers in his home country announced plans to use millions of dollars to build one of Babbadge’s “Analytical Engines.” John Graham- Cumming and Doron Swade are supervising the project at the Science Museum in London. -
Ada Lovelace the first Computer Programmer 1815 - 1852
Ada Lovelace The first computer programmer 1815 - 1852 Biography Ada Lovelace Day I Born on December 10th, 1815 in London as Augusta Ada Byron Each second Tuesday in October is Ada Lovelace Day. A day to raise the I Parents separated when she was a baby profile of women in science, technology, engineering, and maths to create new role models for girls and women in these fields. During this day the I Father Lord Byron was a poet and died when she was 8 years old accomplishments of those women are celebrated. I Mother Lady Wentworth was a social reformer I Descended from a wealthy family I Early interest in mathematics and science, encouraged by her mother Portrait I Obtained private classes and got in touch with intellectuals, e.g. Mary Sommerville who tutored her and later introduced Lovelace to Charles Babbage at the age of 17 I Married in 1835 William King at the age of 19, shortly after becoming the Countess of Lovelace I By 1839, she had given birth to 3 children I Continued studying maths, supported among others by Augustus De Morgan, a math professor in London who taught her via correspondence I In 1843, she published a translation of an Italian academic paper about Babbage's Analytical Engine and added her famous note section (see Contributions) I Died on November 27th, 1852 at the age of 36 Contributions I First computer programmer, roughly a century before the electronic computer I A two decade lasting correspondence with Babbage about his idea of an Analytical Engine I Developed an algorithm that would enable the Analytical Engine to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, unfortunately, the machine was never built I First person to realize the power of computer programs: Not only used for calculations with numbers I Combined arts and logic, calling it poetical science Figure 3:Ada Lovelace I First reflections about artificial intelligence, but she rejected the idea Bernoulli Numbers Quotes I Play an important role in several domains of mathematics, e.g. -
The Early Mathematical Education of Ada Lovelace. Hollings, Martin And
BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics ISSN: 1749-8430 (Print) 1749-8341 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tbsh20 The early mathematical education of Ada Lovelace Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin & Adrian Rice To cite this article: Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin & Adrian Rice (2017): The early mathematical education of Ada Lovelace, BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, DOI: 10.1080/17498430.2017.1325297 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2017.1325297 © 2017 British Society for the History of Mathematics Published online: 01 Jun 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 226 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tbsh20 Download by: [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] Date: 21 June 2017, At: 06:49 BSHM Bulletin, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430.2017.1325297 The early mathematical education of Ada Lovelace CHRISTOPHER HOLLINGS and URSULA MARTIN University of Oxford, UK ADRIAN RICE Randolph-Macon College, USA Ada, Countess of Lovelace, is remembered for a paper published in 1843, which translated and considerably extended an article about the unbuilt Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computer designed by the mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. Her substantial appendices, nearly twice the length of the original work, contain an account of the principles of the machine, along with a table often described as ‘the first computer program’. In this paper we look at Lovelace’s education before 1840, which encompassed older traditions of practical geometry; newer textbooks influenced by continental approaches; wide reading; and a fascination with machinery. -
A Brief History of Computers
History of Computers http://www.cs.uah.edu/~rcoleman/Common/History/History.html A Brief History of Computers Where did these beasties come from? Ancient Times Early Man relied on counting on his fingers and toes (which by the way, is the basis for our base 10 numbering system). He also used sticks and stones as markers. Later notched sticks and knotted cords were used for counting. Finally came symbols written on hides, parchment, and later paper. Man invents the concept of number, then invents devices to help keep up with the numbers of his possessions. Roman Empire The ancient Romans developed an Abacus, the first "machine" for calculating. While it predates the Chinese abacus we do not know if it was the ancestor of that Abacus. Counters in the lower groove are 1 x 10 n, those in the upper groove are 5 x 10 n Industrial Age - 1600 John Napier, a Scottish nobleman and politician devoted much of his leisure time to the study of mathematics. He was especially interested in devising ways to aid computations. His greatest contribution was the invention of logarithms. He inscribed logarithmic measurements on a set of 10 wooden rods and thus was able to do multiplication and division by matching up numbers on the rods. These became known as Napier’s Bones. 1621 - The Sliderule Napier invented logarithms, Edmund Gunter invented the logarithmic scales (lines etched on metal or wood), but it was William Oughtred, in England who invented the sliderule. Using the concept of Napier’s bones, he inscribed logarithms on strips of wood and invented the calculating "machine" which was used up until the mid-1970s when the first hand-held calculators and microcomputers appeared. -
Charles Babbage?
iCompute For more fun computing lessons and resources visit: Who was Charles Babbage? 8 He was an English mathematician Charles Babbage and inventor 8 He designed the world’s first computing machine Biography for children The story of important figures in the history of computing Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871) © iCompute 2015 www.icompute -uk.com iCompute Why is Charles Babbage important? 8 He believed that machines could be designed to do complicated calculations quickly 8 His ideas led to the world’s first programmable computing machines 8 His designs contain may of the parts that modern computers use today His early years 8 Born 26th December 1791 8 The son of a London banker 8 Charles was a sickly child, often too unwell to go to school 8 He was often taught by private tutors 8 One, from Oxford, helped his love of mathematics grow © iCompute 2015 www.icompute -uk.com iCompute 8 He went to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1810 8 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816 8 Helped found the Astronomical Society in 1820 8 In 1814 he married Georgiana Whitmore 8 They had eight children 8 Only four survived to adulthood 8 Charles’ son, Henry Prevost Babbage, built some pieces to his father’s design after his Charles’ death 8 One went to Harvard University and inspired the first ever electro-mechanical computer – The Harvard Mark 1 The Harvard Mark 1 Science Museum, London © iCompute 2015 www.icompute -uk.com iCompute Charles Babbage and Computers 8 He invented the Difference Engine in 1822 which was a machine for calculating tables 8 In 1834 -
Who Was Charles Babbage?
Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 27, Number 20, May 19, 2000 EIRBooks Who Was Charles Babbage? by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. of the Analytical Engine that was under construction at the time of Babbage’s death, all he ever built of that The Cogwheel Brain revolutionary machine. Its modest size gives little clue by Doron Swade to the monumental intellectual accomplishment of its London: Little, Brown, 2000 conception and its much publicized role as the symbolic 342 pages, hardbound, £14.99 antecedent of the modern computer.” That part of Swade’s account, covering the period from May 11, 2000 the launching of the Science Museum’s Babbage project, from May 20, 1985 through the public demonstration of No- The specific merit in Doron Swade’s new assessment of vember 29, 1991, occupies the concluding, third section of his Charles Babbage’s role in the development of modern mathe- book, which is subtitled: “A Modern Sequel.” For qualified matical computing machines, lies in Swade’s notable part in specialists familiar with earlier standard sources on Bab- the actual construction of a machine according to Babbage’s bage’s life and work, the useful contribution of Swade’s book, own designs. Swade describes the circumstances leading into lies almost entirely in the content of that third section. the first public demonstration, which was made in London, The misleading elements in the earlier part of Swade’s on Friday, November 29, 1991, three days after inventor Bab- book as a whole, lie in his fallacy of composition. Instead of bage’s 200th birthday. -
Pioneers of Computing
Pioneers of Computing В 1980 IEEE Computer Society учредило Золотую медаль (бронзовую) «Вычислительный Пионер» Пионерами учредителями стали 32 члена IEEE Computer Society, связанных с работами по информатике и вычислительным наукам. 1 Pioneers of Computing 1.Howard H. Aiken (Havard Mark I) 2.John V. Atanasoff 3.Charles Babbage (Analytical Engine) 4.John Backus 5.Gordon Bell (Digital) 6.Vannevar Bush 7.Edsger W. Dijkstra 8.John Presper Eckert 9.Douglas C. Engelbart 10.Andrei P. Ershov (theroretical programming) 11.Tommy Flowers (Colossus engineer) 12.Robert W. Floyd 13.Kurt Gödel 14.William R. Hewlett 15.Herman Hollerith 16.Grace M. Hopper 17.Tom Kilburn (Manchester) 2 Pioneers of Computing 1. Donald E. Knuth (TeX) 2. Sergei A. Lebedev 3. Augusta Ada Lovelace 4. Aleksey A.Lyapunov 5. Benoit Mandelbrot 6. John W. Mauchly 7. David Packard 8. Blaise Pascal 9. P. Georg and Edvard Scheutz (Difference Engine, Sweden) 10. C. E. Shannon (information theory) 11. George R. Stibitz 12. Alan M. Turing (Colossus and code-breaking) 13. John von Neumann 14. Maurice V. Wilkes (EDSAC) 15. J.H. Wilkinson (numerical analysis) 16. Freddie C. Williams 17. Niklaus Wirth 18. Stephen Wolfram (Mathematica) 19. Konrad Zuse 3 Pioneers of Computing - 2 Howard H. Aiken (Havard Mark I) – США Создатель первой ЭВМ – 1943 г. Gene M. Amdahl (IBM360 computer architecture, including pipelining, instruction look-ahead, and cache memory) – США (1964 г.) Идеология майнфреймов – система массовой обработки данных John W. Backus (Fortran) – первый язык высокого уровня – 1956 г. 4 Pioneers of Computing - 3 Robert S. Barton For his outstanding contributions in basing the design of computing systems on the hierarchical nature of programs and their data.