24 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Ada Lovelace Describes the Analytical Engine
The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated pattems in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in...It is a loom, but for weaving equations.
01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus
How the Analytical Engine Weaves Concepts Like a Loom
The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists i...Lovelace's remarkable description of the Analytical Engine compares it to the Jacquard-loom, which was also programmable.