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Charles Babbage and Difference Enginge No. 2 | Doron Swade | Talks at Google

Talks at Google · 10K views · 2008-05-12 · 1:01:04

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Overview

Historian Doron Swade tells the story of Charles Babbage's quest to build the Difference Engine and the construction of Difference Engine No. 2 at the Science Museum. The talk covers Babbage's motivation, his machines and Ada Lovelace's insight into the Analytical Engine.

On Hacker News

HN commenters link it as a source on Babbage's machines, especially for the section around minute 36 on Ada Lovelace's insight beyond numeric computation.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2012–2022

Topics

History of computing
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charles babbagedifference engineada lovelaceanalytical enginedoron swade

What people said

jsqr · 2012-12 · Recommendation

Some of the claims made about Ada are certainly mistaken, but there are also good arguments for genuine, important contributions. See, for example, Babbage historian Doron Swade's discussion of her insight into potential applications of the Analytical Engine beyond numeric calculation (beginning at 36:30): [VIDEO] By the way, a very good biography of Grace Hopper was published a few years ago: [LINK]

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beefman · 2022-01 · Reference

Women were never in computing in the sense imagined by the author. The manual "computers" and early patch-cord "programmers" he mentions carried out instructions by wrote. Instructions created by men. Women left the field when these jobs became obsolete. Hopper is a notable exception. Lovelace, not so much.[1] Women did a lot of QA through the aughties. Again, this work was automated. [1] [VIDEO]

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908B64B197 · 2022-01 · Reference

Lovelace's insight was understanding that it was possible to represent symbols using numbers (letters, notes of music) and that therefore a machine that could perform calculation could also perform computation [0]. That's something Babbage didn't anticipate (or at least, didn't express it publicly). Lovelace did. Now this article, while true, will sadly get flagged any minute now. EDIT: Wow, I had not seen the rest of the site and the alarming white suppremacist content. [0] [VIDEO]

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