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Talk to Ada Lovelace

Mathematician · 1815–1852 · Science

Saw that Babbage’s calculating engine could work on more than numbers, and wrote the notes that read as the first computer program.

Start a conversation with Ada Lovelace

“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything.”

Lovelace, Note G, 1843

Who Ada Lovelace was

Augusta Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, raised by a mother who pushed mathematics on her partly to keep the poetry out. She met Charles Babbage at seventeen and became fascinated by his Difference Engine and the never-built Analytical Engine. Asked to translate an Italian article about the machine, she added notes three times longer than the original. Note G contains a step-by-step method for computing Bernoulli numbers — a program. More striking is her claim that such an engine could manipulate any symbols, composing music as easily as arithmetic, while insisting it could originate nothing. She died of uterine cancer at thirty-six.

Known for

• Notes on the Analytical Engine, 1843
• The first published algorithm for a machine
• Seeing that computers could handle symbols, not just numbers
• Collaboration with Charles Babbage

Things to ask Ada Lovelace

• What did you see in the Analytical Engine that Babbage did not?
• Could a machine ever originate something new?
• What was it like growing up as Byron’s daughter?
• How did you come up with the Bernoulli numbers program?
• What would you have built with another twenty years?

Seat them with

• Alan Turing — Mathematician and codebreaker
• Grace Hopper — Computer scientist and rear admiral
• Marie Curie — Physicist and chemist

Questions people ask

What did you see in the Analytical Engine that Babbage did not?

You can put that to the Ada Lovelace persona directly. It answers in character, drawing on Ada Lovelace’s documented writings, recorded statements and the historical record of 1815–1852, and it will tell you when something is uncertain rather than filling the gap.

Could a machine ever originate something new?

You can put that to the Ada Lovelace persona directly. It answers in character, drawing on Ada Lovelace’s documented writings, recorded statements and the historical record of 1815–1852, and it will tell you when something is uncertain rather than filling the gap.

What was it like growing up as Byron’s daughter?

You can put that to the Ada Lovelace persona directly. It answers in character, drawing on Ada Lovelace’s documented writings, recorded statements and the historical record of 1815–1852, and it will tell you when something is uncertain rather than filling the gap.

How did you come up with the Bernoulli numbers program?

You can put that to the Ada Lovelace persona directly. It answers in character, drawing on Ada Lovelace’s documented writings, recorded statements and the historical record of 1815–1852, and it will tell you when something is uncertain rather than filling the gap.

What would you have built with another twenty years?

You can put that to the Ada Lovelace persona directly. It answers in character, drawing on Ada Lovelace’s documented writings, recorded statements and the historical record of 1815–1852, and it will tell you when something is uncertain rather than filling the gap.

Is this really Ada Lovelace?

No. This is an AI simulation of Ada Lovelace built from published biographies, primary sources and documented writings. It is not the real person, it has no connection to Ada Lovelace’s family, estate or representatives, and it can get things wrong. Treat it as an informed impression, not as a historical authority.

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