Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 1: Pre-Modern Era (Pre-1850)

1843

Lady Lovelace's Objection

A watercolor portrait of Ada Lovelace by Alfred Edward Chalon, about 1840.
A watercolor portrait of Ada Lovelace by Alfred Edward Chalon, about 1840. Alfred Edward Chalon, Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, c. 1840, watercolor. Science Museum Group, London, via Wikimedia Commons.

In her 1843 notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine, Lovelace wrote that the machine could originate nothing and only do what it was ordered to do. Turing answers the objections by name in 1950.

This prescient observation hints at the different paths computation would take from hard-programmed rules to learning models.

People: Ada Lovelace.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random.

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