Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. [In:] Scientific Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies, edited by Richard Taylor, vol. III, pp. 667?731 and folding table.

MENABREA, Luigi Federico.

Published by London: Printed by Richard and John E. Taylor?, 1843

About this Item

5 volumes, 8vo. Contemporary half calf, spines ruled in gilt with green and red morocco labels, marbled sides, red edges. Bindings a little rubbed and worn at extremities, short crack at top of two joints, spine of vol. 2 cracked. 19th century library label (cancelled) and shelf label on front pastedowns, blind stamp at foot of title with cancellation stamp on verso. A very clean set. Menabrea?s paper is contained in volume III, as above. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of the first and ?most complete contemporary account in English of the intended design and operation of the first programmable digital computer? (Hook & Norman), Charles Babbage?s Analytical Engine, the direct ancestor of the twentieth century computer. It was translated by Augusta Ada King, countess of Lovelace, with notes that are much longer than the translation and incorporate the first published computer programme (although that term was not used). This paper is the most important paper on digital computing before modern times. In 1840 Babbage went to Turin to give a presentation on his Analytical Engine. The military engineer Luigi Menabrea was in the audience and wrote a description of it which was published two years later. It is that paper which Ada Lovelace translated here, but in addition ?she added extensive notes to Menabrea's paper which contain not only what is regarded as one of the earliest computer programs but also prescient comments about the future of such an engine, which have stood the test of time. Her correspondence with Babbage about the time that she was preparing this work for publication elaborates further on her idea of what would now be termed a program, and, moreover, places it in the context of its possible use. Thus on 10 July 1843 she suggested to him: ?I want to put in something about Bernoulli's Number, in one of my Notes, as an example of how an explicit function, may be worked out by the engine, without having been worked out by human head and hands first? ? (ODNB). These volumes comprise a complete set of the first series of Taylor?s Scientific Memoirs. It did not have a large circulation and the second series was divided into two subjects running to only one volume each. Hook & Norman, Origins of cyberspace, 61.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. [In:] Scientific Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies, edited by Richard Taylor, vol. III, pp. 667?731 and folding table.
• Publisher: London: Printed by Richard and John E. Taylor?
• Publication Date: 1843