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I feel like this article is simply intended to demonstrate what the Jacquard loom produced. Leaving out the contributions of Lovelace is no different from leav
by Zelphyr 8y ago
I feel like this article is simply intended to demonstrate what the Jacquard loom produced. Leaving out the contributions of Lovelace is no different from leaving out the contributions of Turing. Both were monumentally worthy contributions to programming, but the intent of this article was to focus on one small but important facet of the overall history.
I myself have read many times over the years about the Jacquard loom but never actually saw a product of it. That is fascinating for me and doesn't take away any of my respect for what Ada Lovelace gave us.
- greglindahl 8y agoWhat's the connection between Turing and the Jacquard Loom? I googled, and there doesn't seem to be any direct connection.
- ggggtez 8y agoThat's actually exactly the point the parent poster is making. Ada Lovelace has no direct relation to the Jacquard Loom. She's only related because she worked with Babbage, and Babbage was mentioned. Both of you are pointing out that Ada/Turing don't need to be mentioned, as it's not an article about general computing, but specifically about the Loom.
- greglindahl 8y agoI'm actually disagreeing with that point, and was doing it by asking a leading question. Turing doesn't appear to have even talked about the Jacquard Loom, while Lovelace did. I consider that to be a direct connection between Lovelace and the loom.
- Someone 8y agoThere’s a direct connection between greglindahl and the Jacquard loom, too ((s)he wrote about it), but that’s no reason to mention greglindahl in the article. Writers writing about these subjects may ignore non-male protagonists, but for subjects like these, one can only try to show that statistically.
- cr0sh 8y ago> greglindahl Call me uncouth, but I don't know who "greglindahl" is...? EDIT: Ok - I have an idea now who "greglindahl" is - but I wasn't able to find any reference to writings about the Jacquard loom? But Lovelace was writing about the Jacquard loom in relation to computation; was greglindahl's writings of the same style - that is, were they in relationship to computation? If not, then of course there'd be no reason to mention that writer. But the fact that Lovelace did write about the context of computation in relation to the loom, makes the idea that she could have been mentioned salient. I'm not arguing that she should have been mentioned, but I can understand how someone could think that might be a worthy addition to the piece.
- Someone 8y ago”but I can understand how someone could think that might be a worthy addition to the piece.” I can understand that, too, but if, as telesilla did, you write ”How can an entire article about Babbage and the Jacquard loom not mention Ada Lovelace even once?”, I and, I guess, many others, don’t read that as ‘might be a worthy addition’. And I don’t know greglindahl, either, but their comment that I replied to argued that, a) the article wasn’t about the loom, but about general computing, and b) because of that, and because Lovelace wrote about the jacquard loom, she should have been mentioned the moment Babbage got mentioned. That’s the only place I know where greglindahl writes about the loom.
- adolph 8y agoExtensively writing about the artifact's connection to modern computing through Babbage without Lovelace is kinda like talking about Wozniak without mentioning Jobs. Each are important in their own right, but together they are more than the sum of their parts. [Lovelace] also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Her mindset of "poetical science" led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine (as shown in her notes) examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace