Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes by Ada Lovelace (1842)

"It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable.

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. This it is calculated to effect primarily and chiefly of course, through its executive faculties; but it is likely to exert an indirect and reciprocal influence on science itself in another manner. For, in so distributing and combining the truths and the formulæ of analysis, that they may become most easily and rapidly amenable to the mechanical combinations of the engine, the relations and the nature of many subjects in that science are necessarily thrown into new lights, and more profoundly investigated. This is a decidedly indirect, and a somewhat speculative, consequence of such an invention. It is however pretty evident, on general principles, that in devising for mathematical truths a new form in which to record and throw themselves out for actual use, views are likely to be induced, which should again react on the more theoretical phase of the subject. There are in all extensions of human power, or additions to human knowledge, various collateral influences, besides the main and primary object attained." -- Ada Lovelace, 1842

Quite remarkable foresight, I would say.

'Passages from the life of a Philosopher' was a very insightful read. We were this close to becoming a steampunk society! Here's the Difference Engine implemented in Clojure[0] and Pythton[1].

[0] https://gist.github.com/divs1210/6e388a31d4e0a425efe7

[1] https://gist.github.com/divs1210/5d2d605339d6bc551ca0

Does anyone know how much of this is Ada's original work and how much is the attributed to L. F. MENABREA who the article says it was written by? I assume that she is listed as a translator because she is a woman. Do you know how she is attributed in her other works?