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Book Cover
Book
Author Essinger, James, 1957- author

Title Ada's algorithm : how Lord Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace launched the digital age / James Essinger

Copies

LOCATION CALL NO. STATUS
 Maine State Lib. Stacks  OFFSITE B L898e 2014    AVAILABLE  
 Bangor Pub. Lib. Stacks  510.92.E78a    AVAILABLE  
Phys Descr xvi, 254 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Note BPL: Edith Richardson Fund.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-244) and index
Contents Poetic beginnings -- Lord Byron : a scandalous ancestry -- Annabella : Anglo-Saxon attitudes -- The manor of parallelograms -- The art of flying -- Love -- Silken threads -- When Ada met Charles -- The thinking machine -- Kinship -- Mad scientist -- The analytical engine -- The Jacquard loom -- A mind with a view -- Ada's offer to Babbage -- The Enchantress of Number -- A horrible death -- Redemption
Summary Behind every great man, there's a great woman; no other adage more aptly describes the relationship between Charles Babbage, the man credited with thinking up the concept of the programmable computer, and mathematician Ada Lovelace, whose contributions, according to Essinger, proved indispensable to Babbage's invention. The Analytical Engine was a series of cogwheels, gear-shafts, camshafts, and power transmission rods controlled by a punch-card system based on the Jacquard loom. Lovelace, the only legitimate child of English poet Lord Byron, wrote extensive notes about the machine, including an algorithm to compute a long sequence of Bernoulli numbers, which some observers now consider to be the world's first computer program
Subject Lovelace, Ada King, Countess of, 1815-1852
Babbage, Charles, 1791-1871
Women mathematicians -- Great Britain -- Biography
Mathematicians -- Great Britain -- Biography
Computers -- History -- 19th century
OCLC # 884439697
ISBN # 9781612194080
1612194087