About the seminar

Any celebration of Ada Lovelace as a ‘computer pioneer’ is founded on a single publication, her Notes, published in 1843, on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Lovelace includes as an example a description of how the Analytical Engine could calculate Bernoulli numbers and for this she has become known as ‘the first programmer’. I propose to examine the basis of this claim. For this I will review the trajectory of Babbage's calculating Engines - his motives for designing them, his aspirations for their use, and their design - interleaving into this Lovelace's own work. Finally, I examine the substance of Lovelace's contribution to computing. I suggest that Lovelace deserves to be celebrated as fully as she is, but not necessarily for the reasons most frequently given.

About the speaker

Doron Swade (PhD, C.Eng, FBCS, CITP, MBE) is an engineer, historian and museum professional. He is a leading authority on the life and work of Charles Babbage and masterminded the successful construction, to original designs, of the first complete Babbage calculating engine. He studied physics, electronics, engineering, philosophy of science, machine intelligence and history at various universities including Cambridge University and University College London. He has published three books (one co-authored) and many articles on the history of computing, curatorship and museology. He is currently researching Babbage's Mechanical Notation at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was awarded an MBE for Services to the History of Computing in 2009.

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