This document provides an overview of an experimental humanities approach to exploring the imagination of Ada Lovelace. It includes biographical information on Lovelace and her collaborator Charles Babbage, as well as quotes and commentary relevant to understanding her work and vision. The document also describes efforts to recreate Lovelace's ideas digitally through projects like Numbers Into Notes, which maps mathematical sequences to music. The goal is to generate and test hypotheses about Lovelace's computational concepts using modern digital tools and design practices.
10. Imagecredit:UCLLibrary,https://www.lms.ac.uk/2015/queen-of-the-sciences
Sophia Frend on Lovelace
“While other visitors gazed at the working
of this beautiful instrument with the sort of
expression, and I dare say the sort of
feeling, that some savages are said to
have shown on first seeing a looking-glass
or hearing a gun… Miss Byron, young as
she was, understood its working, and saw
the great beauty of the invention.”
—Sophia Frend (later de Morgan)
Sophia de Morgan, Memoir of Augustus De Morgan (1882).
https://archive.org/details/memoirofaugustus00demorich
13. MargaretSarahCarpenter[Publicdomain],viaWikimediaCommons
Lovelace on Babbage
“What a mountain I have to climb! It
is enough to frighten anyone who
had not all that most insatiable &
restless energy, which from my
babyhood has been the plague of
your life and my own. However it
has found food I believe at last.”
“He is beyond measure careless and
desultory at times. I shall be willing
to be his whipper-in.”
14. Talking of Lovelace and Babbage
"There is one subject ancillary to Babbage on which far too much has been
written…It is no exaggeration to say that she was a manic-depressive with the
most amazing delusions about her own talents, and a rather shallow
understanding of both Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine…I guess
someone has to be the most overrated figure in the history of computing."
—Collier (1990)
16. Lovelace translates and notates Menebrea
“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched
sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were
susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might
compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of
complexity or extent.”
Photograph:PipWillcox,fromTaylor’sScientificMemoirsprovidedbyMagdalenCollegeLibrary
18. Numbers Into Notes
30 November 2015
http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/news/ada-sketches-emily-howard
Photographsbykindpermissionof
AngelaGuyton/ScienceMuseum
Emily Howard
Lasse Rempe-Gillen
Lily Caunt
Aidan Marsden
German Martinez Merino
Rosie Middleton
20. Ada Lovelace: Notes and Numbers
“… the Mill has two 50 digit Ingress Axes to which arguments
are transferred, with the first Ingress Axis having an auxiliary
50 digit Primed Axis which receives the most significant 50
digits when a 100 digit number is divided by a number of up
to 50 digits. Results from an arithmetic operation appear on
the Mill's 50 digit Egress Axis, which is also accompanied by a
50 digit Primed axis which, in the case of division, receives the
quotient while the remainder appears on the main Egress
Axis. In addition, the Mill has a Run-up Lever which is
activated when exceptional conditions arise during an
arithmetic operation.”
John Walker h,ps://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/
21. https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/emulator.html
N0 35 . modulus
N1 82 . number of numbers
N2 1 . a
N3 1 . b
N4 0 . number counter
N5 2 . constant 2
(?
/
L2
L0
S2
P
L3
L0
S3
P
+
L2
L3
S2
L2
L3
S3
L4 . update count
L5
S4
-
L4
L1
)
22. Ada Lovelace: Notes and Numbers all F4-A5 D1-C4
Fib 35 Theme (F4-A5)
Fib 35 Puffle (D1-C4)
23. Piano
Harp
Piano
Xylophone
Tuba
3
4
4
4
4
4
4
&
Fibonacci mod 35 ('Puffle')
PipWillcox
David De Roure
for Analytical Engine, Piano, Harp, andTuba
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26. http://numbersintonotes.net
Numbers Into Notes
1. Generate a sequence of numbers using an Analytical Engine algorithm.
2. Reduce these numbers to a smaller range of numbers, using clock arithmetic.
3. Play Numbers Into Notes: explore, visualize and play the number sequence interactively.
4. Export this data to music notation, MIDI, a number roll, or a W3C PROV-N graph.
27. Euler’s sequence: https://oeis.org/A275314
http://numbersintonotes.net
Mathematics in Lovelace’s day
Fibonacci—Lagrange noted periodic functions in
Fibonacci numbers in 1774, the “Pisano period’
Pi—Pi was calculated by hand to 100 decimal places in
1706 using Machin's algorithm
Golden Ratio—The number that the ratio of successive
Fibonacci numbers converges to (1.618...)
Prime numbers—Calculated here using the Sieve of
Eratosthenes
Random—Musical dice games were popular in the
1700s and generate random numbers
Factorials—The notation for factorial, e.g. 20!, was
introduced in 1808
Consonance— A mathematical function for calculating
consonance was defined by Leonhard Euler in1739
20!
30. Computational creativity?
MargaretSarahCarpenter[Publicdomain],viaWikimediaCommons
“The Analytical Engine has no
pretensions 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 relations
or truths. Its province is to assist us
in making available what we are
already acquainted with.”
Boden’s Lovelace questions:
1. Helping human creativity
2. Appearing creative
3. Recognizing creativity
4. Creating
31. Numbers Into Notes: the première
Photographs:DavidDeRoure
https://soundcloud.com/alain_du_norde/the-gift-
the-algorithm-beyond-autonomy-and-control
32. • Programmable circuit boards: Arduinos
• Replicating Numbers Into Notes Web app
• Controlled by co-creating participants
• Selecting and mapping a subset of notes
• Learning to suggest augmentations
Music engines
“The engine is capable, under certain
circumstances, of feeling about to
discover which of two or more possible
contingencies has occurred, and of then
shaping its future course accordingly.”
Photographs:DavidDeRoureandPipWillcox
Lovelace:
34. Material algorithms
USB
MIDI
• Hardware is a physical object
containing the algorithm
• Plugs in anywhere that
expects a MIDI keyboard
• Algorithm can be “gifted”
c = a + b;
if (c >= m) { c -= m; }
a = b;
b = c;
35. CharlesWheatstone
“A MURDER HAS GUST BEEN COMMITTED AT
SALT HILL AND THE SUSPECTED MURDERER
WAS SEEN TO TAKE A FIRST CLASS TICKET TO
LONDON BY THE TRAIN WHICH LEFT SLOUGH
AT 742 PM HE IS IN THE GARB OF A KWAKER…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_and_Wheatstone_telegraph
(John Tawell, 1845)
36. Imagecredit:NewYorkPublicLibrary.[Public
An information machine
“not only the mental and the
material, but the theoretical and
the practical in the mathematical
world, are brought into more
intimate and effective connexion
with each other.
…We may say most aptly, that
the Analytical Engine weaves
algebraical patterns just as the
Jacquard-loom weaves flowers
and leaves.”
38. Gradus[n_] :=
Plus @@ (Flatten[Table[#1, {#2}] & @@@ FactorInteger[n]] - 1) + 1
a(n) = A001414(n) - A001222(n) + 1
where
A001414 = sum of primes dividing n (with repetition)
A001222 = Number of prime divisors of n counted with multiplicity
43. Thinking through making
Galey, A., Ruecker, S. ‘How a prototype
argues.’ Literary and Linguistic Computing
2010, (25)4: 405-24. doi:10.1093/llc/fqq021.
“It makes a difference whether we think in terms of
processes or of products.”
“a prototype is a theory”—Lev Manovich (2007)
“one of the goals of the designer has been deliberately to carry
out an interpretive act in the course of producing an artifact"
44. Experimental humanities:
methods and practices
1. Taking inspiration from ideas of the past
2. Generating and testing hypotheses
3. Designing digital artefacts
4. Informing intuitions
5. Explicating interpretations
6. Engaging with scholars and citizens
7. Evaluating and co-creating iterations
45. The explorer
“Those who have learned
to walk on the thresholds
of unknown worlds…may
then with the fair white
wings of Imagination hope
to sore further into the
unexplored amidst which
we live.”
ByHenryPhillips(1820–1868),sonofThomasPhillips[Publicdomain],viaWikimediaCommons
46. This research is supported by the FAST project funded
by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EP/L019981/1)
Imagecredit:NewYorkPublicLibrary.[Publicdomain]
With particular thanks to:
Pip Willcox
• Alan Chamberlain
• Graham Klyne
• Emily Howard
• Ursula Martin
• Lasse Rempe-Gillen
• David Weigl
• AHRC Transforming
Musicology
• Ada Lovelace
Symposium
Thank you