12/25/2023 0 Comments Deliver us the moon tombaugh dronesUnder his administration the US space agency faced Kennedy's challenge to put men on the moon by the end of 1969 and bring them back safe and sound. Bachelor of Education and Law, US Marines pilot, after working in various positions in public and private areas, in 1961 he replaced Thomas Keith Glennan, when he became the second NASA Administartor, where he worked until 1968, when he was replaced by Thomas Paine. James Edwin Webb was an American of many facets. The work of Charles Babbage and Ada Byron remained forgotten for about a century and, along with studies of other pioneers of computational theories (as Alan Turing and Donald Knuth) were the seed of system development that are now used by billions of equipments and devices. ![]() An interesting text on Ada Byron and her work is in this link. In short, Ada Byron built the foundations of what decades later would be consolidated in the algorithm theory, fundamental ballast for computing and its applications.īrilliant mathematician, she always had poor health (she died when 36 years old), was the first computer programmer in history – before any man. In programming languages is what is called IF-THEN-ELSE, basic logic to perform alternative and repetitive procedures for programs created even today, no matter the language used in its development. adding from 1 to 10,000 by using repetitive procedures, named loops (repeatition of a set of operations to obtain a result), which involved testing to determine different procedures to be used in different conditions, for example to identify whether a number is odd or even and execute different procedures in each case. Menabrea’s text with Ada’s notes can be found in this link or this other link.Īda realized even before Babbage the potential of the machine he designed himself she described operations which would be possible, e.g. In note G she describes an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which could be run by Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Ada made the translation and appended seven notes (A to G) that she herself wrote. Once, Babbage asked Ada to translate a text on his Analytical Engine published in French by Italian Louis Menebrea. Among his friends was Charles Babbage, professor of mathematics at Cambridge. In his short life (she died when she was 36 years old), Ada had an important role in computer science. With regard to software, the leading pioneer is Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of poet George Byron, who left her a month after she was born, when he went to live out of England. The referred book is extremely rich in information." The Cogwheel Brain: Charles Babbage and the quest to build the first computer", author Doron Swade. This time, with 20th century technology, it was possible to produce components exactly as he needed. Only in the late 20th century his ideas could come true: some initiatives were made and machines were built based on old Babbage’s projects. Neither the steam engines that characterized the industrial age were so complex as Babbage’s inventions. A major reason for his failure was the fact that at that time there was no standardization in the production of machines and components: for example, each manufacturer produced screws with their own and preferred size, material and characteristic.īabbage’s machines had tens of thousands of components, and could not work without proper technological standard. There is an excellent book that chronicles his attempts to build their inventions. None of them came to work satisfactorily and Babbage had no more financial support for their projects. ![]() Initially he developed projects for the difference engine and, years later, the analytical engine. These were vital information, for example, for navigation.īabbage realized that the work was subject to errors due to inattention and fatigue of those who calculated. It was often used to calculate and publish lists of astronomical ephemeris, ie data on astronomical events, such as the position of known celestial bodies in a given day of the year. He was famous for designing something that could not be successful in his life his mind created the idea of machines able to perform sequences of arithmetic operations very quickly he even created the concept of another equipment that allowed the results to be printed.īack then these activities were carried out by people named computers (they were in charge of performing computations). He is always quoted in the first class in a computer course: Charles Babbage.
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