1) The document is a draft PowerPoint presentation about Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, created for a women and computing class.
2) It provides biographical details of Lovelace's life and education, and describes how she wrote the first computer program for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a precursor to the modern computer.
3) The presentation uses maps and images to illustrate Lovelace's time and accomplishments, and the last slides warn against enlarging images too much which can distort them.
“Oh GOSH! Reflecting on Hackteria's Collaborative Practices in a Global Do-It...
Draft Ada Lovelace Picture Book
1. Ada Lovelace Picture Book
Prepared by the Cronegeek - April 2010
For the Women and Computer Class
at St. Cloud State University
DRAFT: To illustrate use of PowerPoint to make a picture
book – like the classic children’s Golden Book series.
Last three slides illustrate mistakes to be avoided when
enlarging images.
3. Ada was born in 1815 in Marleybone, which is part of London. This map shows how
Marleybone is near famous places like Hyde Park and the zoo in Regent’s Park
4. Ada Lovelace lived during the time when the first railroads were being built.
Here is a map of the railroads in southern England around 1840. Ada could take
the train from London to Southampton or Dover and then take a boat to
France.
5. Ada’s mother did not want her to
become an impractical poet like her
father Lord Byron.
So Ada had lots of math tutors and
grew to love mathematics.
Ada and her friend Mary Somerville
loved to attend science
demonstrations together.
One day Ada met George Babbage
who had written a description of an
Analytical Engine which would
perform math operations and
calculations.
Mary was fascinated and years later
wrote the first program for this
machine – a forerunner of the
modern computer.
6. Charles Babbage – Replace Human
Calculations with a Machine
Charles Babbage, an English
“gentleman scientist” grew increasingly
frustrated with all the errors he
discovered in a book of astronomical
tables and declared,
“ I wish to God these calculations had
been executed by steam.”
His frustration at all the time-wasting
and error-prone hand calculations led
him to develop plans for an Analytical
Engine – a machine which would
perform mathematical calculations.
7. Ada worked from Babbage’s Analytical Engine to develop a program to calculate
Bernoulli numbers. This is a page from an academic journal of 1823 describing
Babbage’s machine.
8. From an 1823 academic
journal describing Babbage’s
Analytical Engine – a very
early design for what we
today would call a computer.
Ada wrote a step-by-step
description of the operations
that could be performed with
punch cards to calculate the
Bernoulli numbers.
This step by step approach is
what we call programming,
so Ada is known as the first
programmer.
9. “Ada met Babbage at a party in 1833 when she was seventeen and was
entranced when Babbage demonstrated the small working section of the Engine
to her.” according to the Computer History Museum web site.
10. Ada Lovelace has been called the “prophet of the computer age.” She foresaw many
possibilities besides math for Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Ada speculated that “the
Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of
complexity or extent.”
Ada Lovelace – Prophet of the Computer Age
Source: Computer History Museum
Today we can use
software like Cakewalk
Music Creator and the
virtual keyboard to
compose music on the
computer – just like Ada
Lovelace predicted.
11. What Happens When Enlarge Pic Too Much?
Original Pic at Original Size
12. What Happens When Enlarge Pic Too Much?
Here Original Pic Enlarged to full Height of Slide
13. What Happens When Enlarge Pic Too Much?
Enlarged Manually to Completely Fill Screen –
Distorting Width
Notas del editor
This is a draft intended to illustrate how one could use PowerPoint to make a picture book for children – like the famous Golden Book series. Generally speaking, I used only blank slides so could arrange picture like on a book page and then used a text box to insert short text. The object is to print out the slides as pages in a book. Note this is only a draft. A proper book on Ada Lovelace would contain more info and be more artistic.
Last 3 slides are intended to illustrate the dreadful results if one enlarges a picture too much and/or if one enlarges the width but not the height, etc. (fails to keep original aspect ratio). Note how blurry and distorted the picture becomes.
To illustrate how one can customize Powerpoint (and to make the slides or pages look more like a children’s picture book), I created my own background. I just used Microsoft Paint as provided with all Windows computers. I set the image size to 640 x 480 which is the proper ratio for Powerpoint slides. I then used the Airbrush tool to create the yellow smudges around the border. I saved the image as a JPG file. In Powerpoint 2007, I clicked on the Design Tab, chose Background Styles (far right of ribbon), then Format Background at bottom of dialog box. Then chose Picture or Texture fill and imported by JPG file. I clicked “Apply to All” and then had this childish border on all my slides.
Source of Image: Wikimedia Commons at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_Lovelace_1838.jpg. Says public domain because copyright has expired.
Map from Google Maps
This drawing of the Railroads in southern England as of 1840 was found by doing a search at Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org) using term Victorian England. URL for this image is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S_england_railways_1840.jpg. In public domain because copyright has expired.
Source of cartoon: Part of long cartoon strip re Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage created by Sydney Padua. Retrieved 4/21/10 from http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/
Source: The Overview page of The Babbage Engine at the Computer History Museum web site. Accessed 4/21/10 at http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/overview/. Image is from this page also, credited to the Science Museum.
Source of Image from page of 1823 academic journal is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_Mr._Babbage%27s_new_machine_for_calculating_and_printing_mathematical_and_astronomical_tables.pdf. Image in public domain since copyright has expired. Will only find this image when searching for Babbage at commons.wikimedia.org if careful to uncheck “for commercial use” at near search box.
Source of Image from page of 1823 academic journal is http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:On_Mr._Babbage%27s_new_machine_for_calculating_and_printing_mathematical_and_astronomical_tables.pdf. Image in public domain since copyright has expired. Will only find this image when searching for Babbage at commons.wikimedia.org if careful to uncheck “for commercial use” at near search box.
Source of image: http://honorsbrit.wikispaces.com/Women?f=print of women at a party. Looked very old, so I have assumed expired copyright. Bottom of page says “Contributions to http://honorsbrit.wikispaces.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.” Found 4/21/10 via Google image search using terms Victorian England.
Full Source for text entry: Ada Lovelace page of The Babbage Engine from the Computer History Museum web site. Accessed 4/21/10 from http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/
Full Source for text entry: Ada Lovelace page of The Babbage Engine from the Computer History Museum web site. Accessed 4/21/10 from http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/
Image from Cakewalk Music Creator 5 website at http://www.cakewalk.com/products/musiccreator/instruments.asp
Original image of 275 x 275 pixels as found at Flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/clvrmnky/3178299616/sizes/o/] under Creative Commons License “Attribution, Non commercial, Share Alike”
Original image of 275 x 275 pixels as found at Flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/clvrmnky/3178299616/sizes/o/] under Creative Commons License “Attribution, Non commercial, Share Alike” Notice how blurry when enlarged to fill slide – this is 262 % of original size. Method: After moving the small original pic to upper left hand corner, I manually grabbed corner of original pic and dragged to filled screen from top to bottom, leaving white margin on right side. With pic selected, I clicked Picture Tools and “Send to Back” so title of pic would be visible (which I dragged to bottom of slide).
Original image of 275 x 275 pixels as found at Flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/clvrmnky/3178299616/sizes/o/] under Creative Commons License “Attribution, Non commercial, Share Alike”. After moving the small original pic to upper left hand corner, I manually grabbed corner of original pic and dragged to filled screen from top to bottom, leaving white margin on right side. Then I grabbed the side grab box and dragged to right (distorting the width) so completely fills slide.