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94 [LOPOKOVA, Lydia.] Interpretations. London: printed by L.L. at The Hogarth Press, 21 December 1927 Single sheet of laid cream paper, octavo (209 × 134 mm), with the incomplete watermark “St. Win”. Printed in black ink to recto. Very faintly creased, else fine. Exceptionally rare invitation hand-printed by Lydia Lopokova at the Hogarth Press , listing the titles of the five skits to be performed at a Bloomsbury theatrical party hosted by her and her husband John Maynard Keynes, including “The Economic Consequences of the Piece”. The “number of copies printed [is] not known but the number must have been quite small”, given the circumstances (Woolmer). This is a fine example of Lopokova’s playful engage- ment with language. Lopokova (1892–1981), the leading ballerina of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, became an unlikely member of the Bloomsbury group after marrying Keynes in August 1925 and moving into his flat at 46 Gor- don Square (the former home of Virginia Woolf and her siblings). The circle initially snubbed Lopokova, and “tended to find [her] bird-brained. In reality she was intelligent, wise, and witty, but not intellectual. E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, and Picasso were among her close friends. She artfully used, and intentionally misused, English to unexpectedly comic and often outrageous effect” ( ODNB ). Richardson, Elizabeth P., Bloomsbury Iconography , St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1989, D1; Woolmer 128.1. £2,750 [131537] 95 (LOVELACE, Ada.) MENABREA, Luigi Federico. Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, Esq. With Notes by the Translator. Extracted from the ‘Scientific Memoirs’, vol. iii. London: printed by Richard and John E. Taylor, 1843 Octavo (221 × 135 mm), pp. [1], 666–731, [1], 1 folding table. Contemporary brown cloth, yellow endpapers. 1 folding table to the rear, “Diagram for the
computation by the Engine of the Numbers of Bernoulli”, numerous tables to the text (1 full page, p. 711). Purple ink library stamp of Horsley Towers; library label of Erwin Tomash (1921-2012), renowned collector of books and manuscripts related to the history of computing; and later shelf mark in pencil, “Q.VI.4”, to front pastedown. Skilfully rebacked preserving the orig- inal spine, 4.7 cm loss to lower half of spine discreetly infilled, a few bumps to extremities and some faint marks to boards, contents evenly toned, else a very good copy, the folding table particularly bright and clean. first separate edition of the most important early paper in the history of computing, remarkably rare, this copy with appealing provenance: from the library of Horsley Towers, at one time the home of the Lovelace family . “Lovelace’s paper is an ex- traordinary accomplishment, probably understood and recognized by very few in its time, yet still perfectly understandable nearly two centuries later” (Hollings, Martin & Rice 2018, p. 86). Its legacy is one that all successive computer scientists have engaged with; Alan Tu- ring famously challenged Ada’s dismissal of artificial intelligence— which he called “Lady Lovelace’s objection”—in his ground-breaking paper, “Computing machinery and intelligence” in 1950. The Sketch is a keystone in the history of computing. Ada’s transla- tion represents “the most complete contemporary account in Eng- lish of the intended design and operation of the first programmable digital computer” ( Origins of Cyberspace , p. 150), though it remained unbuilt during Babbage’s lifetime. Ada herself is distinguished as the only person to see the true potential of Babbage’s analytical en- gine beyond its envisioned capabilities. “In 1840 Babbage travelled to Torino to make a presentation on the Engine to a group of Italian scientists. Babbage’s talk, complete with charts, drawings, models, and mechanical notations, emphasised the Engine’s signal feature: its ability to guide its own operations. In attendance at Babbage’s lecture was the young Italian mathematician Luigi Federico Mena- brea (later prime minister of Italy), who prepared from his notes an account of the principles of the Analytical Engine” ( OOC , pp. 149–50). It was Menabrea’s paper, Notions sur la Machine Analytique de M. Charles Babbage (in Bibliothèque universelle de Genève , October 1842), which constituted the first published account of Babbage’s unbuilt general-purpose computer. Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), who
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