0:00 In 1843, Ada Lovelace published what many consider the world's first computer program—an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers using a machine that did not yet exist.0:09 But a private diary entry from that same summer, found just this year inside a book on algebra, reveals a thought far more radical than any published calculation.0:18 It reads… July 19, 1843.0:20 Another long day spent with Mr.0:21 Babbage and his schematics for the Analytical Engine.0:24 The conversation, as ever, was of gears and levers, of punched cards dictating the sequence of operations.0:30 My mind has been occupied for weeks with the translation of the Menabrea paper, and my own extensive Notes upon it.0:37 The calculation of the Bernoulli numbers is a formidable task, a fine demonstration of the Engine's power.0:43 And yet… something has felt incomplete.0:45 A nagging dissonance in the harmony of my own thoughts.0:48 The world sees Mr.0:49 Babbage's invention as a machine for arithmetic.0:52 A calculator of unprecedented scale, yes, but a calculator nonetheless.0:56 It is a tool of accounting, of naval charts, of astronomical tables.1:00 A grand and glorious servant to the existing sciences.1:03 Even my own mother would approve of such a practical, logical device, devoid of the ‘poetical’ fancies she so fears in me.1:10 Mr.1:10 Babbage is right, of course.1:11 The Engine can create nothing on its own.1:14 It merely executes the commands we encode upon the cards.1:17 It is a tool.1:18 But what if the symbols it manipulates were not numbers?1:21 The thought arrived this evening with the force of a physical blow.1:25 I had to sit down.1:26 The Jacquard loom, which inspired Mr.1:28 Babbage’s cards, weaves flowers and leaves from abstract patterns.1:31 It does not understand botany.1:33 It understands only the arrangement.1:35 The Engine, likewise, does not need to understand number.1:38 It only understands its own operations.1:41 So what if the fundamental relations it processed… were those of musical pitch and harmony?1:46 The intervals, the counterpoint, the development of a theme.1:49 What if the cards commanded it to compose?1:51 Not just a simple air, but a fugue.1:53 A symphony.1:54 It could create elaborate pieces of music, of a complexity no human orchestra could easily perform.2:00 What if the variables were not algebraic, but points in space, lines, and colours?2:04 It could weave patterns, images… art.2:06 This is the turn.2:07 This is the key.2:08 The Engine is not a machine that calculates numbers.2:11 It is a machine that processes symbols.2:13 And any piece of the world that can be reduced to a symbolic system—music, language, logic, art—can be operated upon by this mechanism.2:21 It is a general-purpose machine for the mind.2:24 This is the poetical science I have dreamt of—a new and powerful language for the future, for expressing the unseen connections that bind all things.2:32 We are not merely automating calculation.2:34 We are building a loom to weave the very fabric of thought itself.2:38 It breathes the air of science, but it offers us the power to create a new art.
