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tions worldwide hold copies of the Sketch in either the offprint or journal issue, none outside the UK or US. Grolier, Extraordinary Women in Science & Medicine , p. 122; Origins of Cyberspace 61; To- mash & Williams M83. Hollings, Christopher, Ursula Martin & Adrian Rice, Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist , Bodleian Library, 2018; Hollings, Chris- topher, Ursula Martin & Adrian Rice, “The early mathematical education of Ada Lovelace”, BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics , 2:3, 2017, pp. 221–34. £200,000 [129525]
had by this point established a collaborative correspondence with Babbage, “had been thinking for some time about how she might contribute to Babbage’s projects. Another scientific friend, Charles Wheatstone, asked if she would translate Menabrea’s article, and Babbage suggested she expand it with a number of appendices. After several months of furious effort by them both, with Lord Lovelace sometimes dragged in as copyist” (Hollings, Martin & Rice 2018, p. 77), her translation into English appeared in volume 3 of Taylor’s journal Scientific Memoirs (pp. 666–731) and was short- ly thereafter separately issued in this offprint example. Though Menabrea’s account forms the basis of Ada’s work, her substan- tial explanatory appendices (each signed “A.A.L.”) far surpass the original, and indeed nearly treble the length of the piece. Her final appendix, “Note G”, famously presents an algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers, and is illustrated using a large folding table, which aims to present a complete and simultaneous view of all the engine’s successive changes. Proof of Ada’s obsessive attention to detail and her astute understanding of the Engine’s potential, this table is now “often described as the first computer programme”, and Ada correspondingly hailed as the “first computer program- mer” (Hollings, Martin & Rice 2017, p. 1 and 2018, p. vii). Lovelace’s translation is rare in any format. Only five other cop- ies have surfaced in recent years. Three were the offprint—modern blue wrappers, Richard Green copy, sold at Christie’s 2008; pres- entation from the Earl of Lovelace to C. R. Weld in black morocco, Christie’s 2005; a disbound copy, Sotheby’s 1978—and one copy of the journal issue, sold at Bonhams 2014. Peter Harrington are also offering the William King copy of the offprint issue in contempo- rary red morocco. According to OCLC and Copac, eight institu-
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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