I never am really satisfied that I understand anything;
because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an
infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many
connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question
was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc.
Ada Lovelace
In almost every computation a great variety of
arrangements for the succession of the processes is possible, and
various considerations must influence the selections amongst them for
the purposes of a calculating engine. One essential object is to choose
that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time
necessary for completing the calculation.
Ada Lovelace
Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical
studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage’s Analytical
Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its
processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than
algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and
combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any
other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in
algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly.
Ada Lovelace
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to
originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to
perform. It can follow analysis, but it has no power of anticipating any
analytical revelations or truths. Its province is to assist us in
making available what we are already acquainted with.
Ada Lovelace
The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
Ada Lovelace
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