Nº055 Ada Lovelace Introduction / Einführung: Joasia Krysa 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken | Nº055 Ada Lovelace Introduction / Einführung: Joasia Krysa Introduction The significance of Note G is that it provides a description of method 5 | In Note G, Lovelace explains that and a diagram of an algorithm for setting up the engine to compute the her choice of Bernoulli numbers—a sequence of rational numbers—to Bernoulli numbers.5 The diagram is widely referred to as the first comput- demonstrate the computing powers er program, and the notes the first expression of computer theory. Togeth- Joasia Krysa of the Engine is “a rather complicated example” (“Sketch of the Analytical er, they can be considered what we would describe in contemporary terms Engine Invented by Charles Babbage” as the software required to operate the hardware of Babbage’s machine, [see note 2], Note G, p. 724), but which did not yet exist. useful in that it allows one to highlight the contrast between Babbage’s earlier However, at the time there remained uncertainty over the significance of machine, the Difference Engine, as Babbage’s invention, and the future potential of computation per se. Note G, a mere calculating machine, and his reproduced in full in this notebook from its first published version of 1843, more advanced Analytical Engine as a universal computing machine. contains Lovelace’s reservations in this respect: 6 | Ibid., p. 722. It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. . . . The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. 7 | In time, this also became contest- It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of able. In 1950, Alan Turing, mathemati- anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are cian and computer scientist, wrote his already acquainted with.6 seminal paper on “Computing Ma- chinery and Intelligence” to question the perceived limitations of machines While Note G advises caution as to the potential of the Engine, and com- for independent thinking (artificial putational machines more generally, to demonstrate independent thinking intelligence), against the reservations expressed by Lovelace some hundred (artificial intelligence), Lovelace recognizes the particular significance of years earlier. He famously asked: “Can the Engine in marking a transition from calculation to general-purpose machines think?” computing—from a machine merely able to tabulate numbers to a pro- 8 | “Sketch of the Analytical Engine There Never Was a Note G grammable universal machine capable of manipulating symbols according Invented by Charles Babbage” to rules and of generating anything at all, whether music, poetry, or im- [see note 2], Note A, pp. 691, 694. ages.7 In Note A she writes: 9 | Ibid., p. 696. In his letter to Ada Augusta Lovelace of July 2, 1843, Charles Babbage writes: 1 | Letter from Charles Babbage to Ada Augusta Lovelace, July 2, 1843, “I like much the improved form of the Bernoulli Note but can judge of it The Analytical Engine, on the contrary, is not merely adapted for tabulating the results of one particu- 10 | Ibid., pp. 696, 694. typed copy, British Library, Additional lar function and of no other, but for developing and tabulating any function whatever. In fact the engine better when I have the Diagram and Notation.”1 He is referring to the last in ADD 54089. 11 | Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Com- may be described as being the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality a set of notes written by Lovelace that interpreted the Analytical Engine, the and complexity. . . . The operating mechanism can even be thrown into action independently of any puter Programming (Reading, Mass.: 2 | Luigi Federico Menabrea, “Notions first fully automatic and universal computer, invented by Babbage in 1834, sur la machine analytique de Charles object to operate upon.8 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1981 [orig. 1968]). It is also interesting although never actually completed during his lifetime. She appended these Babbage,” Bibliothèque Universelle de to note that there is an object-oriented notes to her translation of an article written by Luigi Federico Menabrea Genève 82 (October 1842). The trans- The distinctive feature of the machine is its use of punch cards for program- programming language named Ada in lated article with Lovelace’s notes was recognition of Lovelace’s contribution after he had heard Babbage present a paper on the Engine. Her transla- published as “Sketch of the Analytical ming the Engine, adopted by Babbage after they were first introduced by to programming. tion, together with her extensive notes (three times the length of the original Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, Joseph Jacquard to instruct the loom to automate and regulate weaving pat- article), were published in 1843 and signed A.A.L.2 Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, terns in 1804. Lovelace remarks that the Engine “weaves algebraic patterns just 12 | Geoffrey Batchen, “Electric- Officer of the Military Engineers. With ity Made Visible,” in New Media In the same letter, Babbage recounts the order of the notes in preparation Notes by the Translator,” Scientific as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”9 Furthermore, in expressive Art: Context and Practice in the UK for submitting them to the publisher: Memoirs 3 (1843), pp. 666–731. terms that combine poetry and mathematics (as befits the daughter of the 1994–2004, ed. Lucy Kimbell (London poet Lord Byron), she imagines that the Engine might “compose elabo- and Manchester: Arts Council England 3 | Letter from Ada Augusta Lovelace and Cornerhouse Publications, 2004), A Sent to Lady L. to Charles Babbage, July 2, 1843, rate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent,”10 pp. 27–44. In 1999 Hüseyin Alptekin B With C.B. handwritten, British Library, Additional preempting Donald Knuth’s comments in 1968 that computer programming made an embroidered canvas that con- C Ditto ADD 37192. need not be considered to be merely functional, but “an esthetic experience nects many of these threads and named it Lovelace. He explained: “Lace, which D Sent to Lady L. 4 | This came almost one hundred much like composing poetry or music.”11 Lovelace points to the poetic and denotes a completion of love, which is E With C.B. years in advance of the work of Konrad metaphysical dimensions of technological invention, something to which remembered along with love, purveys Zuse, Alan Turing, Howard Aiken, and F Retained by Lady L. Geoffrey Batchen draws attention in his article describing the parallel history meaning both in the sense of being a Grace Hopper and the invention of sucker as well as in terms of embroi- G Where is it gone? the machines that came to symbolize of the Analytical Engine and lace in connection with William Henry Fox dery. Besides this, lovelace is once again H With C.B. the age of modern computing (Z1, Talbot’s lace contact print of 1845.12 a borrowing from disparate references Baby Manchester Computer, Harvard In keeping with Babbage’s description of Lovelace as the “Enchantress of and is a send off to different contexts. Mark I, and ENIAC). Like the famous porno star Linda In response to his question about the missing Note G, Lovelace writes: “There Numbers,” it is the speculative nature of her work that continues to intrigue, Lovelace, it is also a borrowing of the never was a Note G. I do not know why I chose H instead of G, & thus insulted such as her childhood dreams of writing a book about “Flyology” that would famous mathematician Ada Byron the latter worthy letter.”3 In the final published version of the work, Note H set out a method of flying (predating William Henson’s design for an aerial Lovelace whose name was given to an infobiogen server. Tulle, curtaining, becomes Note G and subsequently, along with Babbage’s machine and the rest steam carriage of 1842): veiling, removing, stitching. . . . Fantasy of Lovelace’s notes, a key reference point in the history of modern computing.4 deals with postponing the jouissance, 2 | 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken Nº055 | Ada Lovelace EN | 3  As soon as I have brought flying to perfection, I have got a scheme about a . . . steamengine which, if inasmuch as the truth is embroidered ever I effect it, will be more wonderful than either steampackets or steamcarriages, it is to make a thing in the dance of seven veils.” Quoted in the form of a horse with the steamengine in the inside so contrived as to move an immense pair of from: www.clubmedia.de/clubmedia99/ wings, fixed on the outside of the horse, in such a manner as to carry it up into the air while a person hba_html/hba_set_12.html (accessed sits on its back.13 October 2011). 13 | Quoted from a letter from Ada In her work, as well as in her life, Lovelace managed to combine scientific Lovelace to her mother Lady Byron rationalism with subjective imagination, influenced by her experience of the dated Monday, April 7, 1828, in Betty Industrial Revolution and the many technological innovations at that time.14 A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Num- bers (Mill Valley, Cal.: Strawberry Press, However, in a departure from the discipline-based systems of thinking and 1992), p. 34. acquiring knowledge reinforced by the industrial period, she strongly believed 14 | Most importantly Charles in the need for connecting all disciplines. This attempt to go beyond the Wheatstone’s telegraph, Joseph separation of fields of knowledge has since become a common thread in con- Jacquard’s loom and punch cards, temporary thinking, as for instance in the work of cybernetician Heinz von Sir David Brewster’s kaleidoscope, Michael Faraday’s first induction of Foerster, who argued that in an increasingly complex world, it is no longer electric current, and Mary Somerville’s possible to maintain traditional science as the dominant structure of thinking. scientific writings On the Connexion of Consequently, there is a shift toward what he described as “systemics,” an the Physical Sciences (1934). approach that sees things together in complex connections and interrelations.15 15 | Interview with Heinz von Foerster Lovelace’s term for this was “Poetical Science,” and her Note G anticipates in Lutz Dammbeck’s documentary film the indefinite potential of machines to express complexity.16 Das Netz (2003). 16 | The author would like to thank those who assisted in various ways with Joasia Krysa is a curator, writer, and academic living in the UK and Poland. research in preparation of the material for this notebook: Colin Harris, Mary Clapinson and Alan Brown at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; Adrian Shindler and Justin Clegg at the British Library, London; Matthew Connell and Paul Wilson at Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Nicola Thwaite at the National Trust, London; Jo Francis Charles Babbage, and John Fuegi; and Lucia Pietroiusti. Analytical Engine, 1871 4 | 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken