3 women who radically changed the course of technology
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It is also wrong to say that Hopper is "largely the reason coders no longer need to write in ones and zeros". K. Zuse's Plankalkuel [2] is from the 1940s, and the first high-level programming languages. And formalisms like the lambda calculus or mu-recursive functions are even older, Turing complete and hardly based on 0s and 1s.
It's also wrong to say without Lovelace we might not have computers, or indeed that she was the first programmer. Humans have been working on automata (that evolved into computers) by making them more powerful, e.g. the Antikythera mechanism [3]. It's also wrong to say that Lovelace was the first programmer. As far as one can see from the notes, she helped Babbage write down, and popularise his ideas.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_System
Then for Lovelace, lets go back even further. Mathematics itself already contains the base principles that enable the formalisms of lambda calculus.
Additionally, the Antikythera mechanism was predated by many admittedly more crude but still important calculating mechanisms like the abacus. So its wrong to say that those automata would have existed independently.
Its almost as if everyone's work is built upon the work of those before them and wouldn't be possible otherwise. Does that invalidate their achievement?
I think that "x wouldn't have happened without y" statements in questions of scientific discovery are almost always false, at least partially for this reason.
In some ways it does invalidate their achievement, to the extent that they are portrayed as being the sole agent of radical change when, in all likelihood, they are just the person who got there first (and often by a slim margin, as the history of scientific priority disputes shows).
The point of my original post was to be an antidote to the extreme hyperbole of "3 women who radically ...", and to set the recored straight.
GP is right to insist she did not invent the 1st programmable computer, Baggage did, yet I argue she wrote the 1st program.
Historian's rightly test the hypothesis of Lovelace's primacy in our field. I show she was the both the 1st to publish and contend her overall vision was greater than her contempories.
Babbage's, never built, Analytical Engine was programmable with punch cards and Ada published a program to compute Bernoulli numbers - it is uncontested this is the 1st published program for the Analytical Engine.
Some have argued, by analysing her other correspondences that she had not the wit to conceive such a program and only transcribed. I argue this is both mean spirited and so uncertain as to be unsound.
Uncertain because her other correspondence must have reflected contempory mores. Both the egos involved & the strict gender expectations of the time, that for 'health reasons' a 'too clever' woman should face censorship. Further she must have used every means at her disposal, charm as well as ability, to win such prestigious position.
Unproven because she certainly was well versed in Mathematics, her mother ensured she was mathematically educated, so she certainly understood Bernoulli numbers.
Her greater achievement, IMHO, was to envision the porention of the Analytical Engine. Babbage's Analytical Engine was devised, capable of computing different tables, programmable with other arithmetics, tides, artillery.
Ada saw beyond mere arithmetic to all numbers could represent: algebra (& thus meta-programming) and t he imaginative arts. She envisioned the engine computing music, poetry and pictures, which implies creativity & thought , proto-A.I in idea. This extraoridinarily prescient vision is quoted by Turing himself as a direct inspiration.
Perhaps Babbage speculated we have no record; Lovelace published and that's what counts.
Her actual words leave (me) little doubt she grokked computation is kin to cognition. http://nlcatp.org/30-incredible-ada-lovelace-quotes/
s/ envision the porention of/ envision the potential of/r
it is uncontested this is the 1st published
program for the Analytical Engine.
the strict gender expectations of the time,
She envisioned the engine computing music,
poetry and pictures, which implies creativity
& thought , proto-A.I in idea.
Using numbers to represent syntax (what you lazily attribute to Lovelace too) is much older and can be found for example in Leibniz's 1666 "Dissertatio de arte combinatoria", where one finds a detailed exposition of a method to associate numbers with linguistic notions. I have no idea if Leibniz was the first to do this. Leibniz also built some early calculators/computers, and is thus a cornerstone of the tradition that lead to the emergence of computers. This tradition was known in Babbage's time, and most likely to Babbage.
In the light of all this, I remain convinced that Lovelace helped Babbage to write up and popularise his ideas.
[1] W. Zhao, Rendering the Illusion of Life: Art, Science and Politics in Automata from the Central European Princely Collections.
[2] D. Summers Stay, Machinamenta: The thousand year quest to build a creative machine.
I assure you, your imputation is incorrect.
You provide useful historical context, the history of automata is fascinating but is not in any way counterfactual to Lovelace's primacy.
Automata certainly inspired A.I. & robotics, both the pioneers & modern roboticists like Tilden's BEAM and Brook's Behaviour-based robots, exploring mechanical intelligence. Automata influenced early British Cybernetics ( e.g. Grey Walter's Turtles ) & thence the schools of Artificial Life. Daniel Dennet's influential Theory of Mind cites Vaucason's duck automata among others.
I reiterate, if Babbage wrote a program we have no record today. Lovelace was capable of writing the program. Lovelace published one and that's what counts. Thus:
Lady Ada Lovelace was the 1st programmer.
Without clear and undisputable evidence to the contrary I shall side with Alan Turing on the matter, he cites both Lovelace & Babbage as inspirations.
your imputation is incorrect.
Babbage wrote a program we have no record today.
That may change in the future, given that we now have a lot of female scientists. OTOH, given the statistically undeniable inability of highly educated women to procreate, society will probably soon revert back to the traditional model.
BTW, you have not addressed the pixie-dust question.
Hopper both invented the concept of compiler and wrote the 1st one. In 1952 Hopper's A_0 compiler transformative to the prevailing wisdom that computers were only programmable arithmatical tabulators. Hopper (like Lovelace) envisaged meta-programming, that numbers could represent algebras & transform code itself, i.e. compile.
So she rightly deserves the accolade. Assembly language was 1955 so Hopper wins. Plankalkül was unpublished & before general purpose programmable computers (ENIAC) were built so irrelevant.
A_0 was the first working program to transform source code to binary program and distinguish between the two. Before that 1s and 0s were entered by programmers punching cards so neither is that article assertion incorrect.
Times, roles & meanings were different then. Programmers were not allowed near computers but submitted punch cards to Operators. Computer still meant automated calculator, usually a person. Program was programme and not a verb yet.
Correct to say that then all that was needed was a linker and that at today's scale a linker not the whole of compilation, but still a vital part.
Hopper also used her position to lobby succesfully for her idea and create standards for machine independent languages that became COBOL, on which banking still runs today. She had the idea, the 1st implementation & made it a success.
That she coined the term bug to communicate all types of errors & faults to superiors is still transformative today.
Using computer in the old sense of calculator, not its contempory sense of general purpose computer is also too narrow, why not just say Abacus rather than Antikythera ?
Your point [2] is interesting but irrelevant, Plankalkül was unpublished, it was a tool of thought not a computer program.
Hopper both invented the concept of compiler and
wrote the 1st one.
A_0 was a simple linker in 2016 parlance, not a compiler.
In Hopper's own description: "All I had to do was to write down a set of call numbers, let the computer find them on the tape, bring them over and do the additions. This was the first compiler" (cited from [1]). Here "find them on the tape" refers to her habit of collecting subroutines over the years and put them on tape. Each routine was given a call number, so that it the machine could find it on the tape.
I'm happy to believe that she created the first linker, although I have never looked into the history of linking and linkers.
Plankalkül was [...] before general purpose programmable
computers (ENIAC) were built so irrelevant.
[1] C. Marx, Grace Hopper: The First Woman to Program the First Computer in the United States.
[2] R. Rojas, How to Make Zuse's Z3 a Universal Computer.
Z3 is very impressive, telephone relays were much more reliable than the valves used in Bletchley's Collosus by Tommy Flowers.
Failing valves prevented Collosus working until Flowers showed valves failed when powered off and so Collosus ran without cessation.
Wonder why Flower's didn't use relays, he was a telephone engineer so was familiar with them.
One should not fail to mention Antheil, it was a collaboration.
No, we most certainly do not. And of course one of the 3 spots is wasted on the myth of Lovelace, as usual. Don't bother picking someone who actually mattered.
But if we are talking the general public, who might not know much about Turing beyond that a movie exists, if that. They would have no clue who von Neumann is. Zuckerberg, Gates, and Jobs would be far more likely to be who they think of as innovators of technology.
I wish the cult of personality would go away, and instead of credit going to an individual we could say, "innovators like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Tesla/SpaceX".
There is a long unjust tradition of stealing deserved credit from engineers, employees & research assistants[1].
Sometimes individuals are solely resposible for important ideas and implementations, credit should be accorded accurately to teams and individuals.
[1] Jocelyn Bell, discoverer of radio-pulsars, robbed of the Nobel by her research supervisor, stealing credit for it.
Avoiding personalities should we merely say radio-pulsars were discovered at Jodrell Bank ? Seems less accurate, IMHO.
All modern physics stands apon Noether's 1st theorem, that every differentiable symettry of physical action is conserved.
Not to mention rings.
That he transformed society by successfully commercialising those ideas is undisputable.
Alan Kay's Dynabook was an innovation, Jobs realised this innovation in the iPhone, transforming society as Kay predicted truly portable computers would.
Again with windowing & GUIs, without Jobs Xerox Parc's ideas may have been lost to history.
So he did radically change the course of technology which is the OPs title. Innovations languish without succesful implementation.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Do you now think Lovelace was only useful to Babbage in the manner you describe?
The mechanical method of finite differences was built in many successor machines, mechanical calculators are myriad til the 1980's.
The methods were also used by the original computers, rooms of people computing parts of a sum - these very methods were used at Bletchly Park during the war.
Turing had read Babbages writings. The methods of mechanical calculation informed his Bombe machine.
The Analytical engine though never built directly inspired most early computer pioneers just to believe it was possible.
Lovelace's vision of automatic computation of numbers representing algebras, thoughts & music - directly inspired Alan Turing and A.I.
Punch cards were used in most early computers but this idea originates much earlier with Jacquard and his programmable weaving looms.
Babbage also proposed a packet switching semaphore network on church steeples, never built but his exposition of the efficiencies of packet switching was part of its history.
Babbage also proposed a packet
switching semaphore network
..."In order to convey the cylinder which contains the letters, it would only be necessary to attach it by a string, or by a catch, to either of the branches of the endless wire. Thus it would be con- veyed speedily to the next station, where it would be removed by the attendant to the commencement of the next wire, and so forwarded."..."Perhaps if the steeples of churches, properly selected, were made use of, connecting them by a few intermediate stations with some great central building, as, for instance, with the top of St. Paul's"..."it might be possible to diminish the expense of the two-penny post, and make deliveries every half hour over the greater part of the metropolis."
On National Speaking tubes: ..."Admitting it to be possible between London and Liverpool, about seventeen minutes would elapse before the words spoken at one end would reach the other extremity of the pipe."
On semaphore & telegraph: "At Liverpool a system of signals is established for the purposes of commerce, so that each merchant can communicate with his own vessel long before she arrives in the port."
I didn't know about Apollo 11 details involving Hamilton! Cheers.