Babbage & Lovelace: The designer of the analytical engine and its programmer

A talk on Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, The designer of the analytical engine (the first computer) and its programmer.

1. Charles Babbage and
Augusta Ada King, Countess
of Lovelace
The designer of the analytical engine
and its programmer

2. Charles Babbage
(December 26, 1791 – October 18, 1871)
"All careers were open to
such a man. In any he must
have succeeded. Unhappily
for himself, he chose a path
which ... led only to loss of
fortune and embitterment of
mind.”
Obituary of the Royal
Astronomical Society

3. Education, Achievements
•Rich family, received good education
•At university, promoted Leibnizian over Newtonian
calculus: "The Principles of D-ism in opposition to
the Dot-age of the University"
•"His love of humour was so strong a characteristic
that, to omit it, is to omit half the man"
•Active in many areas:
lighthouse signaling, uniform
postal rates, Greenwich time
signals, cow-catcher
•At that time seen as the
greatest British mathematician

4. Babbage and
Lord Tennyson
"The Vision of Sin":
Every minute dies a man,
Every minute one is born
Babbage in a letter to Lord Tennyson:
”...If this were true the population of the world
would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of
birth is slightly in excess of that of death.
I would suggest:
‘Every minute dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born’
I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre.”
A letter from Elizabeth Barrett: “That such a poet should submit blindly
to the suggestions of his critics is ... as if Babbage were to take my
opinion & undo his calculating machine by it.”

5. Mathematical Tables
•Human computers produced sets of
mathematical tables for use by astronomers,
navigators and engineers.
–Very laborious
–Error-prone
•Three basic sources of error:
–calculation
–transcription
–typesetting and printing

6. Mechanization of Calculation
•1821, while proofreading for
the Astronomical Society:
"I wish to God these
calculations had been
executed by steam“.
•1822: Design of the Difference
Engine
–calculate and print the results
automatically
•1823: Government Grant of
£1500 (≈110.000£ today)

7. Construction started,
but never completed
•Lack of expertise
–Transition between craft traditions and mass-production
–Babbage had to invent the tools
–His survey of manufacturing techniques
"On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures“
–Babbage's effort at gear making resulted in superior British
machinery for next decades ( First World War)
•Babbage suffered of "creeping featuritis" and kept
changing the design of the machine
•Dispute with the toolmaker
•Babbage's difficult personality and personal problems
(in 1827, his wife, father, and one son died)

8. Abandonment of the Project
•1834: Work stopped
•1842: Government officially abandoned the project
•Costs: £23.000,
including £6.000 of
Babbage’s own money
•“On two occasions I have been asked
[by members of Parliament], 'Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the
machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able
rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could
provoke such a question.”
•In 1855, Georg and Edvard Scheutz built two Difference Engines.
However, the engines failed to establish themselves and quickly fell
out of use

9. The Analytical Engine
•Difference Engine:
Calculation of polynomial equations
•Between 1833 and 1842, design of a machine
programmable to do any kind of calculation
•No comparable general-purpose computers until
about 100 years later (Z3, Harvard Mark I)
•Little attempt to raise funds to build the
Analytical Engine
•In 1878, British Association for the Advancement
of Science recommended against construction

10. Design of the Analytical Engine
•Input devices based on punched cards, the mill, a control unit, a
store, output mechanisms (a bell, a curve plotter, a printer, card
puncher)
•Separation of store and mill is a fundamental feature of modern
computers
•Programming language
equivalent to assembly
languages (Turing complete):
●Loops
●Conditional branching

11. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace
December 10, 1815 - November 27, 1852
•Daughter of Lord Byron
and Anne Isabelle
Milbanke
•Lovelace's parents
married on 2 January
1815, separated on 16
January 1816
•Lord Byron went abroad
and never returned to
England.
•Lady Byron was given
sole custody

12. Lovelace, Mathematics & Babbage
•Her mother, “the Princess of Parallelograms“, had
a passion for mathematics and watched that
Lovelace would not become a poet
•Lovelace had an excellent education, particularly
in mathematics
•1833, Lovelace met Baggage at a party. Two
weeks later, she and her mother visited his
London studio
•Lovelace was fascinated by the prototype
Difference Engine and by the plans for the
Analytical Engine
•Sophia Frend, later DeMorgan's wife:
".. young as she was, understood its
working, and saw the great beauty of the
invention"
•She and Babbage corresponded regularly. He
encouraged her in her mathematical studies

13. Lovelace’s Social Life
•In 1835, Lovelace married
William King and later became
Countess of Lovelace.
•Her social life included Charles
Dickens and Michael Faraday.
•A strange story:
When she was thirty-three, Lovelace spent some
time in Brighton with Charles Dickens. Soon
afterwards, he wrote her that strange things
were happening at his hotel. He wondered
whether Lovelace was "haunting" him, and if so:
"I hope you won't do so“.

14. The “Notes”
•In 1842, she translated a report
on Babbages work by Menabrea.
•Babbage suggested she should add
notes to the report
•The “Notes”: three times the length of the original,
the most important work describing the Analytical
Engine (published in 1843)
•Lovelace augments Menabrea's statement
and clearly defines the boundaries of the
Analytical Engine
•The "Notes" contained the first published computer program:
Instructions on how to calculate the Bernoulli numbers.
•No one ever rewrites a Byron:
Babbage: "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
you friendship and your Notes."

15. Lovelace, the first programmer?
•DeMorgan: "Ada's power of thinking from the
beginning of the correspondance with her,
has been utterly out of common way for any
beginner, man or woman."
•Babbage correspondance with Lovelace
reveals that he gave her very little help
•Babbage: "[She] has entered fully into almost
all the very difficult and abstract questions
connected with the subject."
Lovelace's contributions are not undisputed. However,
statements from that time clearly state her competencies:

16. Quotes from her “Notes“
•"The operating mechanism of the Analytical Engine ... might act
upon other things ... whose mutual fundamental relations could
be expressed by … the abstract science of operations ... .
Supposing … that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in
the science of harmony … were susceptible of such expression …,
the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of
music..."
•"... the Analytical Engine weaves
algebraical patterns just as the
Jacquard-loom weaves flowers
and leaves."
•"The Analytical Engine has no
pretensions whatever to originate
anything. It can do whatever
we know how to order it to perform."

17. After the “Notes”
•Lovelace's health deteriorated
–lack of a scientific project
–lack of friends with whom to discuss mathematical problems
–Babbage was becoming depressed at his own lack of success
and failed to give necessary support
•Lovelace flirted with several of her male acquaintances,
several scandals. Her husband destroyed over 100 of her
letters to such friends.
•Drinking with meals became drinking instead of meals
•Gambling problems, pawned some of her jewels. When
she died, £2000 gambling depths
•Died of cancer in 1852, aged 36.
Charles Dickens visited her at her deathbed.

18. Back to Babbage
•1847: the design of Difference Engine No. 2
•Suffered from misanthropy. Still, “... he hated mankind
rather than man, and his aversion was lost in its own
generality".
•When he died in 1871, only few people knew who he was.
–Scientists: his reform of Mathematics
–Others: prosecutor of street music
•The Royal Society printed no obituary,
the Times ridiculed him

19. The Engines Today
•1985-1991:
London Science Museum built Difference Engine No. 2
•Built to the original designs and to tolerances achievable with
19th century technology
•4.000 separate parts, weight of 2.6 tonnes,
2.1m high, 3.3m long and 45cm in depth
•Difference Engine No. 1, if built:
25.000 parts, weight of 15 tonnes
•Analytical engine: over 30m long and 10m wide
•In 2000, construction of the printer of Difference Engine No. 2.
Weight of 2.5 tonnes

21. •"As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will
necessarily guide the future course of the science.“
•"The operating mechanism of the Analytical Engine
... might act upon other things ... whose mutual
fundamental relations could be expressed by those
of the abstract science of operations.”