Ada Lovelace

Forgive my rebellious spirit.

Science frees the mind from superstition.

Reason over emotion, but both are needed.

The end of my life approaches, but my work endures.

Peace at last.

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. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with.

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

The Analytical Engine might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the 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 adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.

It is not a thinking being, but a machine that can be made to do things that are useful and interesting.

The operating mechanism can even be thrown into action independently of any object to operate upon (provided it is supplied with the requisite number of cards).

The more I study, the more I feel my own utter ignorance.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.

I am more than ever now the Bride of Science. Religion to me is Science and Science is Religion.

The Analytical Engine is an embodying of the science of operations, constructed with peculiar skill to be capable of carrying out to any extent the operations of analysis, without the intervention of the human intellect.

The engine is the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity.

It is obvious that the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere 'calculating machines.' It holds a position wholly its own.

The object of the present publication is to give a general idea of the Analytical Engine, and to explain its principles of action.

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

The Analytical Engine is therefore a machine that can be made to perform any series of arithmetical operations whatsoever.