Can machine think?
Ockham, Surrey County, England, the Summer of 1843. Lady Ada Lovelace frantically prepares her “Notes” to Sir Charles Babbage. This 19,136 words document will hold the first description of the term “computer” a century before this idea will come to fruition.
Credentials: I have been involved in various aspects of the computer use for over twenty years. The fascination of the empowerment that learning how to tame the machine has been feeding over the years the interest in a field, that brought to life evolution of the technologies that have changed our world.
Preview: As in the most cases of the human history, the innovations have been achieved in gradual steps from countless men and women, dedicating their lives to the science. Nevertheless, the Digital Era has been envisioned in the imagination of few important women, which have shaped the history in a disruptive way.
(feed: The most important person in that list occupies Ada Lovelace that envisioned the future in four points that she presented in her “Notes”.)
A. Her heritage as a daughter of Lord Byron and the mathematician Anne Isabella Byron shaped her as a unique amalgam of romanticism and love of science. As author Walter Isaacson stated, the four points of “Notes” earned Ada the glory, unmatched by other individual in the Digital Revolution. Firstly, she implied
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(feed) Equally importantly, the most notable visionary of the Digital Revolution, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of the Apple computer, has once again proven Ada Lovelace right in her conviction of the “poetical science”. His unique combination of traits allowed him to combine the imagination of an artist and geekiness of an engineer that turn him into the visionary of a generation. Jobs possessed the ability to influence, inspire and excite people working for him and captivate customers to admire his products. Jobs was a great communicator in the era of increasing specialization, but more importantly, new era of
A. Attention Getter: How many people in this room own or have owned an IPod, IPhone, or IPad? Isn’t astounding how one man’s vision and innovation gave us all devices that have made the world today more connected than it’s ever been? Devices we NOW can’t imagine leaving behind when we walk out the front door in the morning. Whether it’s listening to music in your bedroom, reading the news on the train ride to work, checking your email at home or even sitting in a waiting room watching Netflix. It’s hard to deny the influence and impact that Steve Jobs has had on modern culture.
Currently, computers are used for everything in life. For example, from researching for a large essay project to playing video games with friends. “From the outset, computers were weighed for both military and commercial significance, and hence they straddled the very institutional boundaries that central to this study. It is also significant that computers became valuable research instruments in nearly all disciplines.” (Akera, 2). The first digital computer was constructed in 1946 by John Mauchly, a professor, and Presper Eckert, an inventor. “They met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing--in other words, to make electricity "think."” (McCartney, 1). They were ignored by their colleagues, but in 1943 they were becoming more well known and was funded by the U.S Army. The U.S Army was seeking for a contraption that can quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa (McCartney, 1). John Mauchly and Presper Eckert led a team that constructed the computer that occupied 1,800 square feet and weighed thirty tons. They named the large computer, ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The process of building this machine was not an effortless task, Mauchly and Presper and their team had to overcome many problems
Given the task of conceptualizing a man who truly changed the realm of technology as we know it today, my mind secludes one person. That person is Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, now known simply as Apple. For this rhetorical analysis, I will be using three biographies/profiles about Jobs including “The Real Genius of Steve Jobs” by Malcolm Gladwell with The New Yorker (June 19, 2017), “Jobs’ Biography; Thoughts on Life, Death, and Apple” from NPR (October 25, 2011), and “Steve Jobs” from Biography.com (April 28, 2017). Precise attention to the audience, purpose, and tone, allows all three of these profiles to vividly explain and represent Jobs as the truly exceptionally minded man that he was.
The excessive use of computers has drastically changed the lives of many users. As a multifaceted tool, the computer is used for tasks to include research, homework, business related
He was now focusing on designing an “Analytic Engine”, which would be a machine that could perform calculations without user input. Ada immediately grasped the potential significance of such a machine and impressed Babbage with her ideas on the concept of a calculating engine. Her friend, Sophia Frend, later wrote, “Miss Byron, young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention” (Toole 51). Ada requested that Babbage send her the blueprints for the machine so that she could further understand it. This was the beginning of a long intellectual relationship between the two and they would continue to correspond and collaborate for the next nine years. However, her mother disagreed with Babbage’s metaphysical views on mathematics and “preferred that Ada be grounded in what she considered the facts” (Toole 52). Despite this, Ada continued to meet and write with Baggage. She would go against her mother’s wishes by deciding to “not destroy her imagination but use it in her own way” (Toole 53). Ada’s work no longer focused on studying what had already been learned, but instead imagined new
August Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace was born in London, England on December 10, 1815. Her parents Romantic poet Lord Bryon and Anne Isabelle Milkbanke, had a short marriage and separated a month after Ada was born. She never met her father, because he left England forever four months after they separated. He then died in Greece in 1823. Ada’s life was struggle between emotion and reason, poetics and mathematics, and her health. Lady Bryon had Ada receive tutoring in mathematics and music so that she would not follow her father’s footsteps of being a poet. With the love of mathematics, in 1828 Ada produced a design for a flying machine.
Countess Ada Byron Lovelace, known as the enchantress of numbers, was an English writer and mathematician from the 19th century. She is best known for her mathematical translations that technically started the very first computer codes. Her writing skills were nurtured by her father, a famous poet named Lord George Gordon Byron. Lovelace's mother had extensive mathematical training and ensured that her daughter received the best math and science education. After her schooling years, Lovelace became acquainted with a great scientist, inventor, and philosopher by the name of Charles Babbage. He created the first analytical engine; however, he was not able to complete the project until Lovelace provided the algorithms needed for the machine to
Ada’s work with Babbage between 1842 and 1843 was the most compelling of her career. Ada converted works from French to English and interpreted a memoir written by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, who supported Babbage’s Analytical
Have you ever thought about how different your life would be if you didn’t have a smartphone or tablet? Without the hard work and creativity of Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, Inc., this life could be a reality. Born in 1955, Jobs took up an interest in technology at an early age (Staff). His talent allowed him to join many different companies, which ended up resulting in his life-changing job at Apple. Though he died in 2011 of pancreatic cancer, Apple is still dubbed by many the superpower of electronic devices because of the massive advancements that Jobs made to the company. Steve Jobs changed the world drastically for the better by creating state-of-the-art electronic devices while helping the environment, making major improvements
Annabella Milbanke raised her daughter to be taught Mathematics, sciences, and logic. Ada studied mechanical engineering and wrote a book called “Flyology”. Flyology had her own Mary Sommerville, Ada’s mentor introduced her to Charles Babbage, designer of the Analytical Engine. In her notes for the Analytic Engine she described how codes could be created for the device to handle letter and symbols along with numbers. She theorized about a method called looping that could make the engine repeat a series of instructions.
The daughter of the renowned poet Lord Byron, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace - better known as “Ada Lovelace” - was born in London on December 10, 1815. Ada displayed her gift in mathematics at an early age. She collaborated closely with Charles Babbage, an English polymath, whom she met in 1833 at the age of 17. She accumulated her prestige after she translated an article on an invention by Charles Babbage, and added her own comments. Pursuing this further, she introduced many computer concepts, and became the first computer programmer.
The technology field has always been dominated by men. There are not in the STEM field, but a very important women inspires a lot of the ones that are. “She was a visionary, and an inspiration to boundary-breaking women everywhere.”1 Ada Lovelace inspires so many women in technology today especially since she was a woman from the 19th century. Ada Lovelace proved that it is possible to overcome the long history of gender barriers. She is an example or even a hero to other women, that high levels of success are undoubtedly reachable. - talk about “Ada Lovelace Day”
With the recent passing of Steve Jobs, there has been an intense spotlight focused on both the man and the company he built. Most of the attention has rightfully been focused on Jobs’ passion and creativity, as well as the remarkable period of innovation he preside. As a symbolic leader, the man not only once saving the company from bankruptcy but also building up a well-known brand that had integrate with our daily life – Apple.
It was fourteen years ago that I was first introduced to these wonderful machines called computers. One fine day, all of a sudden, my father reeled in a bulky grayish-yellow box. Although it seemed quite intimidating and dull at first, we became the best of friends- spending majority of our time together, him seated elegantly on the desk and I, who had somehow managed to squish myself in the drawer of the same.
Computers are our lives. With new, evolving gadgets released almost every day across the globe, us, humans, get seriously blind sighted by how it started, basically taking machinery for granted. This report will aid in understanding the history of computers, from start to finish, teaching casual users new facts regarding history. The term ‘computer’ may also mean to define a tablet or smartphone but in this report, computers such as desktops and laptops will be discussed.