Transcript Charles Babbage & Ada Lovelace

Charles Babbage
& Ada Lovelace
Jessica Young
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Charles Babbage
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http://www.mathe.tu-freiberg.de/~dempe/schuelerpr_neu/pics/babbage.jpg
December 26, 1791 – October
18, 1871
Cambridge – Trinity College &
Peterhouse
Married Georgiana Whitmore
on July 2, 1814
Seven children (only three
lived until adulthood)
Founded Analytical Society,
British Association for the
Advancement of Science, and
Statistical Society of London
Ada Lovelace
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http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dirk/.image/ada_1838.jpg
December 15, 1815 –
November 27,1852
Educated in
Mathematics
Married William King
on July 8, 1835
Three children
http://www.cs.gordon.edu/courses/cs104/lectures/history/cards.jpg
Timeline
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1798-9 – first paper-making machine
1800 – cloth production through use of machines
1803 – Jacquard – automatic loom with punched cards
1816 – first working electric telegraph
1820 – Thomas – arithmometer
1834 – Babbage – Analytical Engine
1837 – Morse – electromagnetic telegraph
1843 – Scheutz – first working difference engine
1866 – America and Europe were connected with
Atlantic Cable
Difference Table
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Successive values of x
Differences noted between each adjacent value
of f(x)
f(x)=x2+2x+3
x
1
2
3
4
5
6
f(x)
6
11
18
27
38
51
5
1st
difference
2nd
difference
2
2
7
2
9
2
11
2
13
2
2
2
Difference Engine
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http://library.thinkquest.org/C0115420/Cyber-club%20800x600/Gif/pics/Babbage/Difference-Engine.gif
Mathematical tables
Government paid him more
than 17,000 pounds ($1.3
million today)
“It isn’t a computer. It is a
dedicated, ‘hardwired’
calculator. It crunches
numbers the only way it knows
how—by the method of
difference.” (Cherfas)
Difference Engine No. 2
completed in 1991 on the
200th anniversary of his
birthday
Scheutz Difference Engine
(Georg & Edvard)
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http://www.dudleyobservatory.org/images/Artifact_images/difference%20engine.jpg
Finished in 1843
Based on Babbage’s
design
“Scheutz probably
succeeded where
Babbage did not because
Scheutz was not a
perfectionist like
Babbage: Scheutz
allowed some
compromises in order to
bring the machine to
fruition.” (Norman)
Analytical Engine
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http://www.virtualtravelog.net/entries/2004-03-AE_Mill_2.1.png
General-purpose
computer
Technological limitations
Punch cards
“Babbage differed from
Morse and Bell in one
essential way—his ideas
were so far ahead of his
time that there was little
practical use for his
calculating engines when
he invented them.”
(Norman)
Ada’s “Notes”
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Menabrea article
Ada’s ‘Notes’
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Mastery of mathematical theory and
numerical techniques used by Babbage
Correction of errors by Menabrea and
Babbage
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Is Babbage the ‘Father of Computers’?
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Did Ada actually contribute?
Sources
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Cherfas, Jeremy. “Seeking the soul of an old machine: Charles Babbage’s difference engine is
ready to run – built for the first time 150 years after it was designed.” Science 252 (1991): 13701.
Fuegi John and Fuegi, Jo Francis, "Lovelace & Babbage and the Creation of the 1843 'Notes',"
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 16-26, Oct-Dec, 2003. Jo Francis,
"Lovelace & Babbage and the Creation of the 1843 'Notes'," IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 16-26, Oct-Dec, 2003.
Hyman, Anthony. Charles Babbage – Pioneer of the Computer. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1982.
James, C. L. and Morrill, D. E. 1983. The real Ada, countess of Lovelace. SIGSOFT Software
Engineering Notes 8, 1 (Jan. 1983), 30-31.
Kidwell, Peggy A. and Paul E. Ceruzzi. A Smithsonian Pictorial History. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1994.
Lee, J. A. N. “Charles Babbage.” 30 Sept. 1994. Virginia Tech. 3 Apr. 2006.
<http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html>.
Norman, Jeremy M. From Gutenburg to the Internet – A Sourcebook on the History of
Information Technology. Novato, California: historyofscience.com, 2005.
Toole, Betty A., Ed.D. Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers. Mill Valley, California: Strawberry Press,
1992.
Williams, Michael R. A History of Computing Technology. 2nd ed. Washington: IEEE Computer
Society Press, 1997.
Difference Table Example
x3
x
1
2
3
4
5
f(x)
1
8
27
64
125
7
1st difference
12
2nd difference
3rd difference
19
6
6
6
37
18
6
61
24
6
6
6
6