MENABREA, [LOVELACE, TRANSLATOR], SKETCH OF THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE INVENTED BY CHARLES BABBAGE, 1843

FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, 8vo (220 x 133mm.), offprint from Scientific Memoirs, vol. III, folding diagram, contemporary cloth boards, some light browning, loss to spine, upper joint split, binding worn

Horsley Towers, library, purple ink stamp on inside front cover (without the shelfmark written in, though there is a later shelf mark in pencil written above, Q.VI.4); bought from Jeremy Norman, San Francisco, 1994 Ada and her husband William, Earl of Lovelace, moved into East Horsley Place in 1845; it was subsequently remodelled by William and renamed Horsley Towers. The house was sold in 1919 to Sir Thomas Sopwith, who sold off the contents in 1926 when it became a girls' school.

Tomash & Williams M83; Origins of Cyberspace 61

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THE BEST CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTION OF BABBAGE’S ANALYTICAL ENGINE WITH THE FIRST COMPUTER PROGRAMS ADDED BY ADA LOVELACE. FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE LOVELACE FAMILY AT HORSLEY TOWERS. The work was originally a report by L.F. Menabrea (an Italian military engineer and later the first prime minister of Italy) of a series of lectures given by Babbage while he was in Turin. This was published, in French, in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève in 1842. The mathematician and computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815--1852, daughter of Lord Byron and his wife Annabella Milbanke), translated it into English and, at Babbage’s suggestion, added a large number of notes. As a result, the translation is three times as long as the original. The only indication of the identity of the translator and annotator are the initials A.L.L. on the last page.

The paper contains seven explanatory notes that were added by Lovelace at Babbage’s suggestion. Two of these are essentially programs for the Analytical Engine. This inclusion has given rise to the claim that Lovelace was the first computer programmer.

"[Ada Lovelace] added extensive notes to Menabrea's paper which contain not only what is regarded as one of the earliest computer programs but also prescient comments about the future of such an engine, which have stood the test of time... She also saw the graphical potential of the analytical engine, and that by changing to a new medium, the punched card, scientific information would be seen in a new light. Thus, in a famous and influential metaphor, she wrote 'The Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves' [quote from current work]...Interestingly, Ada also saw the limits of such a technological innovation...Her comment 'The Analytical Engine has no pretension whatever to originate anything' evokes and anticipates the heated debate between proponents of artificial intelligence and those who believe the human mind cannot be reduced to a machine." (Betty Alexandra Toole, ODNB)