Introduction

Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Creator of the Analytical Engine - the first general-purpose digital computer (1833)
The Analytical Engine was not built until 1943 (in the form of the Harvard Mark I)

The Analytical Engine

A programmable, mechanical, digital machine

Could carryout any calculation

Could make decisions based upon the results of the previous calculation

Components: input; memory; processor; output

Ada, Countess of Lovelace(1815-52)

Ada: the mother?

Wrote a program for computing the Bernoulli’s sequence on the Analytical Engine -

world’s 1st computer program

Ada: A programming language specifically designed by the US Dept of Defense for

developing military applications was named Ada to honor her contributions towards

computing

A lesson that we all can learn from Babbage’s Life

Charles Babbage had huge difficulties raising money to fund his research

As a last resort, he designed a clever mathematical scheme along with Ada, the Countess

of Lovelace

It was designed to increase their odds while gambling. They bet money on horse races

to raise enough money to support their research experiments

Guess what happened at the end? The lost every penny that they had.

Fast

Bored

Storage