Ada, the enchantress of numbers
Subtitle: a selection from the letters of Lord Byron's daughter and her description of the first computer
By: narrated and edited by Betty A. Toole.
Contributors: Toole, Betty A.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Strawberry Press; Orders to Critical Connection
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Mill Valley, California; Sausalito, California
Language: eng
Number of pages: 439
Subjects: Lovelace, Ada King, Countess of, 1815-1852 -- Correspondence.; Mathematicians -- Great Britain -- Correspondence.; Calculators.; Computers.
Description: Toole did research for more than eight years, burying herself in British archives and libraries to narrate and edit this extraordinary collection of letters written by Ada Lovelace. Not only do they outline Ada's ingenuity for the sciences, but they also enlighten us on all aspects of Lady Lovelace's multidimensional life: her passionate desire to flourish in a "man's world," her battle with drug addiction and chronic sickness, and her efforts as a mother and wife. Lovelace also had a reputation as a wild gambler and a lover. Ada was one of the first to write programs of instructions for Babbage's Analytical Engines, the famous precursors to the modern digital computer. Ada's letters are some of the classic founding documents of cybernetics and computer science, written nearly a century before ENIAC.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 429-430) and index.
Letters to and from the Countess of Lovelace, 1824-1852.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments; title: Timeline; title: Family Tree; title: Cast of Characters; title: Introduction; label: 1
title: Cats and Flying Machines [1824-1828]; label: 2
title: Conversational Litigation, I Am an Altered Person, Ada Meets Babbage, The Rainbow [1829-1834]; label: 3
title: Make It Part of Your Mind, Solving Unsolvable Equations, The Royal Road to Mathematics [1834-1835]; label: 4
title: Love and Marriage, Establishing Three Households, The Birth of Byron [1835-1836]; label: 5
title: Two More Children, Ada Becomes a Countess, Gift of Tongues [1836-1839]; label: 6
title: A Peculiar Way of Learning, Immeasurable Vista, Solitaire, The Great Unknown [1839-1841]; label: 7
title: In Due Time I Shall Be a Poet, A Scientific Trinity, A Most Strange and Dreadful History [1841]; label: 8
title: I Have a Duty to Perform, Avis-Phoenix, Will-o'-the-Wisps [1841]; label: 9
title: Scorn and Fury, Poetical Genius, Not Dropping the Thread of Mathematics, A Nice Colony of Friends [1842]; label: 10
title: Working Like the Devil, A Fairy in Your Service, What a General I Would Make, An Analyst and a Metaphysician [1843]; label: 11
title: Multitudinous Charlatans and the Enchantress of Numbers [1843]; label: 12
title: The Analyst and the Metaphysician, and the Analytical Engine: A Selection from Ada's Notes [1843]; label: 13
title: Fairy Guidance, My Metaphysical Child, Caged Bird [1843-1844]; label: 14
title: Planetary Systems, Not a Snail-Shell But a Molecular Laboratory, A Newton for the Molecular Universe [1844]; label: 15
title: A Calculus of the Nervous System, A Hospitable Chaos, The Traitor, Too Much Mathematics [1844]; label: 16
title: Vestiges, Obedient with Safety, Poetical Science [1845-1846]; label: 17
title: A Transition State [1846-1850]; label: 18
title: Descending into the Grave, Resurrection, Be a Gypsy, Doomsday [1850-1851]; label: 19
title: Catch a Comet, Not �5 in My Purse, Give the Despots a Shove [1851]; label: 20
title: The Dragon and the Rainbow [1851-1852]; title: Appendix I: Footnotes, Bibliographies, Biographies, including Web addresses; title: Appendix II: Critical Questions along the Pathway to the 21st Century; title: Index