[SIGCIS-Members] Play about Ada and Babbage

[Evan Koblentz]

I never dived deeply into Babbage/Lovelace before teaching this semester. In preparing for the first classing meeting, back in January, I read a lot of primary sources about the protagonists.

I learned that Babbage wrote a couple of dozen programs between 1836-1840. That includes the one on Bernoulli, which Lovelace put into her appendices while translating Menabrea’s work in 1843.

There is little doubt that Lovelace saw farther than Babbage in documenting that a computer could do more than just mathematics, but it makes me want to scream when I read things like the play’s homepage which states: “The programming: that was all Ada” – that is false.



From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of "Ceruzzi, Paul" <CeruzziP at si.edu>
Date: Monday, March 14, 2022 at 9:50 AM
To: "members at SIGCIS.org" <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Play about Ada and Babbage

This message is a little late, and it may appeal only to those of you in the DC area, although I believe the play will be staged in other cities. I haven't seen it yet but plan to next week.  A play about Ada Augusta and Charles Babbage:

https://avantbard.org/project/ada-and-the-engine/
[Image removed by sender.]<https://avantbard.org/project/ada-and-the-engine/>
Ada and The Engine - Avant Bard Theatre<https://avantbard.org/project/ada-and-the-engine/>
>From prolific playwright Lauren Gunderson, Ada and the Engine is a whimsical scientific history sure to delight audiences.
avantbard.org
Paul Ceruzzi
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