So, OK: would the Analytical Engine have gotten beyond computing mathematical tables? I suspect so. If Ada had lived as long as Babbage, she would still have been around in the 1890s when Herman Hollerith was doing card-based electromechanical tabulation for the census (and founding what would eventually become IBM). The Analytical Engine could have done much more. But none of this actually happened, and instead Ada died young, the Analytical Engine was never finished, and it took until the 20th century for the power of computation to be discovered.

this is very fascinating. if ada hadn’t died so young, perhaps the age of computing would have started 100 years earlier.

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