blog  What can the analytical engine do? Ask Charles Babbage...

Jun 2007

I recently read the original article of Charles Babbage - which deals with the work he and Lady Ada Augusta Countess of Lovelace did on the Analytical Engine, one of the (mechanical) predecessors of the modern computer - thanks to a blog post from David Dodds. I guess that his position is representative of that one of many people in the xml community - people who, when facing the ontologists/AI/intelligent-agents/SW prophets, always try to keep things down to earth. But anyways. The original passage from the Countess of Lovelace is quite interesting: