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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
 Posted - 07/13/2006 : 13:23:03 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Siberia
And, to balance things, there's always Ada Lovelace, who receives the credit, when it was unlikely she ever did anything.
(further info shall come when I get time.)
On the work she did:
quote:
During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognized by historians as the world's first computer program. Biographers note, however, that the programs were written by Babbage himself, and Lovelace simply found a mistake in the first program and sent it back for amendment. The evidence and correspondence between Lovelace and Babbage indicate that he wrote all of the programs in the notes appended to the Menebrea translation. Her prose acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which Babbage never published, such as speculating that "the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."
In her defence, some parts of her life-story are very dramatic:
quote:
Ada Lovelace was bled to death at the age of 36 by her physicians, who were trying to treat her uterine cancer. Thus, she perished, coincidentally, at the same age as her father, and from the same cause - medicinal bloodletting. She left two sons and a daughter, Lady Anne Blunt, famous in her own right as a traveller in the Middle East and a breeder of Arabian horses.
At her request, Lovelace was buried next to the father she never knew at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham.
Source: wikipedia |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2006 : 22:40:56 [Permalink]
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Reading the letters Time included make it sound soooo like a typical breakup between Einstein and his first wife. He writes to his friend that the ex is saying bad things about Einstein to the kids (though it sounds like this is different later). She want more money. Sounds like a typical break up, and no there doesn't seem to be any, "you took my ideas" in there. I do have a sore spot for disloyal men running off with the 'newer model'. Though it also sounded from the letters that he was miserable before he left Mileva.
It makes sense that sore mention might be in a private letter or two from Mileva, unless Einstein destroyed anything like that which he could have.
So, OK, maybe he didn't rip her off but likely her career was wasted as a result of men's (or I should say society's) attitudes at the time. |
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McQ
Skeptic Friend
USA
258 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2006 : 05:07:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
So, OK, maybe he didn't rip her off but likely her career was wasted as a result of men's (or I should say society's) attitudes at the time.
Yeah, hers and about 50 million other womens'. |
Elvis didn't do no drugs!
--Penn Gillette |
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Topic Locked
