Ada Lovelace

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths.

We may say most aptly, that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science. It is that which feels & embodies the beauty of this life, & discovers the Ideal of the perfect.

Those who view mathematical science, not merely as a tool, but as an object of contemplative enjoyment, will regard the Analytical Engine as an ideal of a perfectly perfect logical mechanism.

The science of operations, as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of itself, and has its own abstract truth and value.

It is the object of the author to show that there are no limits to the powers of the Analytical Engine which correspond to those of the Difference Engine; and that it is not merely adapted to tabulate, but also to integrate.

The distinctive characteristic of a machine is, that its motions are governed by strict laws, and that its parts are so connected as to produce certain results from given conditions.

Poetry is the lava which flows from the volcano of the soul.

I am myself a far greater admirer of poetry than of science.

The poetry of mathematics is a noble and sublime art.

In studying the powers of the Analytical Engine, we have before us a machine which can do whatever we can command it to do.

The engine can arrange all its words into columns, as in a dictionary, so that it can look them up when required.

The operating mechanism can be represented as a sort of language.

One essential object is to make two things coincide, namely, the notation of analysis and the notation of the machine.

The conditions which enable an Analytical Engine to be carried out are precisely the same as those which determine the possibility of constructing a Difference Engine.

Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and arrangements, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.

It might even play chess, drawing its chess-board from its own storehouse of cards.

The Analytical Engine often has what we call a mind. It has memory, it can accumulate, it can combine.

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many foreign branches of science.

Mathematical science shows us the operations of a machine of a higher order, a machine which is a real representation of every truth in its own infinity of combination and application.