The memoir was published in French, however,
and Babbage recruited Ada to help make it
accessible to an English-speaking audience.
Over a nine-month period during 1842–1843,
Ada devoted herself to completing the work,
eventually producing not only an English
version of Menabrea’s work, but a set of
appendices longer than the original document
itself. In these appendices, Ada wrote a
detailed account, in Section G, of how a
sequence of Bernoulli numbers
could be
calculated
using
the Analytical
Engine.
Although the Engine was never built,
retrospective studies have concluded that
Ada’s calculations would have been correct
had the Engine existed at the time. In addition
to her mathematical accuracy, Ada’s other
notes some more speculative, show an
awareness of computing potential that went
beyond mere number crunching. Ada
anticipated advances, such as computer
generated music, which would not be fully
realised until a century and a half later. For
these contributions, Ada has been dubbed the
‘first computer programmer’.
Not everyone is convinced that Ada deserves
this title, however. Some historians have
suggested that Ada functioned more as an
editor or compiler rather than as a
mathematician in her own right. These critics
note that, although published under her name,
the algorithms had been completed by
Babbage several years earlier, and that her
correspondence with Babbage indicates that
Ada relied a great deal on his guidance and
authority in composing her appendices, while
making only minor corrections herself. Other
historians defend her role. According to
Benjamin
Woolley, Ada’s biographer, Ada’s great
contribution lies in her discussion of the
implications of Babbage’s work and her
conceptual vision of what computing might
become. In accomplishing this, Woolley
suggests, Ada ‘rose above the technical
minutiae of Babbage's extraordinary invention’
and revealed its ‘true grandeur’. For his part,
Babbage always insisted that Ada’s work, while
the product of an extensive dialogue between
them, was entirely her own.
Disputes aside, Ada’s legacy in both computing
and the wider popular imagination is now firmly
established. The British Computer Society now
awards a medal bearing her name, and the
United States Department of Defence has
named a computer language, Ada, in her
honour. In addition, a number of organisations,
inspired by the example she set, also exist to
foster the development of women in the fields
of computing, science and technology.
6
Bernoulli numbers (named after Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli) are the sequence of rational numbers; extremely important in number theory and analysis
and the subject of the first computer program.
82
IELTS Essential Guide
