Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage: Translation and Notes by Ada Lovelace

Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage: Translation and Notes by Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician considered by many as the first computer scientist in history. Soon after the (never built) invention of the “Analytical Engine” by Charles Babbage, i.e. the first mechanical computer, Ada Lovelace became interested in this machine. She began an intense exchange of ideas and notes with Charles Babbage through the years and translated an article of the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea on the Analytical Engine.This book presents the translated article together with Ada Lovelace’s added notes, that constitute the bulk of the text. She included several insights that can be considered seminal contributions to the field, most notably: the outline of the first published computer program in history (Note G), useful to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with the Analytical Engine, and a groundbreaking description of the Analytical Engine as a general purpose machine, a visionary concept that became reality much later with the contributions of Alan Turing and John von Neumann.Sourced from the public domain, this work has been proof-read, newly typeset, and indexed.