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Ada Lovelace Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

Browse quotations by Ada Lovelace with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.

Sources

All 1 works represented in this collection

Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage — Note G1843 · 1 quotation
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Mind 1Deep 1Thinking 1Art 1Creativity 1Innovation 1Intelligence 1Knowledge 1Reason 1Thought Provoking 1
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The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.
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“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.”

Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage — Note G · 1843
Meaning & context

Lovelace cautions readers not to attribute independent origination to Babbage’s proposed machine, distinguishing programmed operations from the human knowledge used to specify them.

Source details

Ada Lovelace, Note G to her 1843 translation of Luigi Menabrea’s “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage.” The claim concerns the proposed Analytical Engine in its historical design context and is not generalized into a factual limit on modern AI systems.