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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:54:09 +0000
Subject: Re: The joy of Ada
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On 9/27/24 7:02 AM, Andy Walker wrote:
> On 27/09/2024 07:52, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> [...] Imagine
>> that Charles Babbage hadn’t completely failed at building his Analytical
>> Engine. (Only it was called the “Difference Engine”, for some 
>> inexplicable
>> reason.)
> 
>      The Difference Engine was a completely different project.  It was
> called the Difference Engine because it was meant to calculate 
> differences*,
> which were the principal tools in numerical mathematics for the calculation
> of values of functions [sine, cosine, sqrt, log, ...].  In the days before
> computers, tables of such values were an essential part of the engineer's
> [or physicist's or statistician's] toolkit and was what mathematicians 
> often
> spent their entire careers providing and checking.  It was tedious work, so
> was ripe for automation.
> 
>      Babbage is remembered today for little more than these projects, but
> he did much more than that.  His Wiki article is worth reading, if only to
> learn the breadth of his interests and contributions.


   Babbage really was a gifted engineer and maths guy,
   he had enough rep to get the govt to front him rather
   a lot of money to build the difference engine.

   Apparently costs-analysis was NOT one of his best
   skills alas. The machine is devilishly complicated
   and was at the cutting edge of mechanical techniques
   and precision at that time.

   I think some MIT people finally *built* one, or a
   substantial part of one. I've seen a vid, all the
   brass clockwork is hypnotic to watch.

   I'd say his greatest accomplishment was establishing
   once and for all that any math/logic can be done by
   machine, no 'magic' in a human brain required. The
   mid 1800s were when they could finally whisk away
   all the pixies and 'principles of' and 'essences'
   and made 'natural philosophy' into real science.

   Lada Ada does indeed have a rep for being a pain
   in the ass and a relentless egotist/self-promoter.
   However she DID immediately grasp the concepts
   behind the Analytical Engine (even wrote a big
   promo for it - there's a French text on the net)
   and DID see it's more esoteric uses whilst Babbage
   was mostly obsessed with doing boring math algos.

   Ah, a translation she did of that 'promo' for
   British consumption :

https://old.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-ada-lovelaces-notes-on-the-analytic-engine

   Alas the AE was even more complex than the DE plus
   Babbage kept revising and revising the gearworks
   and thus never arrived at what you'd even call a
   "final design", much less an actual device. The
   reasoning of what it NEEDED to do was perfectly
   sound however - as important as an actual product.
   It WAS (or would have been) a "general-purpose
   computer" ... a i8008 in shiny brass.

   Poor bastard was born about 50 years too soon - if
   he'd ever seen a triode tube ...

   There WAS some Russian ex-pat building digital logic
   circuits with trides/'valves' in the 1910s as I
   recall - the U *THREW MOST OF IT AWAY* after he retired,
   only a few assemblies survived (looked like 8 or 10
   bit adders).