Re: "C" vrs ADA

[hitchens@godzilla.UUCP]

In article <1573@sol.ARPA> crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) writes:

  [lots of other stuff deleted]

>Ada Augusta Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, was an associate of Babbage.  I
>do not remember reading anything that indicated she was his mistress.  Charles
>Babbage DID NOT invent the punched card driven loom, it was invented by Jaquard
>in the 1700's.  The loom was not the first computer.  The first computer was
>(arguably) Babbage's Analytic Engine, which was never built.  The machine was
>driven by cards, but since it was never built, I doubt Ada ever punched a card.
>She did write programs (on paper) for the machine.  Ada Lovelace was the first
>programmer, so it is reasonable to name a programming language after her.

>  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-8479	University of Rochester
>		     crowl@cs.rochester.arpa	Computer Science Department
> ...!{allegra,decvax,seismo}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627

   Ada Lovelace was quite a remarkable person.  She was a world-class 
mathematician and produced a significant body of work.  It's remarkable
that she did this at a time when women weren't exactly welcome in the sciences,
but it becomes amazing when you learn that she suffered from very poor health,
enduring severe and nearly continuous migrain headaches.  I believe she died
fairly young (mid-30s I think) because of her poor health.

   As for whether she was Babbage's mistress, I don't know, and what does
it really matter?  Being the daughter of Lord Byron, it's probably inevitable
that people of the day would think so, whether it was true or not.  In any
case, Ada Lovelace is worthy of recognition for her professional life
regardless of what she did in her personal life.

Ron Hitchens			hitchens@godzilla.cs.utexas.edu
 Another one of those		hitchens@sally.utexas.edu
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