It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. — Ada Lovelace · Smartyfair

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It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. — Ada Lovelace · Smartyfair

It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.

Ada Lovelace1815–1852 · computer scientist · 1800s EnglandAda Lovelace was an English mathematician who worked with inventor Charles Babbage on an early mechanical computer called the Analytical Engine.4 quotes

Source foundInvention

In plain words

A computer only does what people figure out how to tell it to do.

Look up a word

whatever
know
order
perform

Where these words come from

How sure this is: 95% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
What turned up: Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 3 (1843), Note G on the Analytical Engine (the 'Lovelace objection' passage) — primary scan page fetched; earlier 'Note A' label was wrong.
Work: Notes on the Analytical Engine (Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 3)
Occasion: 1843
Sources checked: en.wikiquote.orgChecked using claude-sonnet-5, 20 August 2026Sourced section, On computer creativity / Scientific Memoirs (1843)
en.wikisource.org

More from Ada Lovelace

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.

More on invention

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Science

1800s

Checked using claude-fable-5, 21 August 2026

Scientific Memoirs Vol. 3 (1843), proofread scan page headed 'Note G.—Page 689.' — verbatim; full passage: 'The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.'

Nothing made from these words yet — Storyfaire is where they get made.

We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

Ada Lovelace

I mean to do what I mean to do.

Of all lines which have the same extremities the straight line is the least.

Archimedes

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible.

Stephen Hawking

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.