BIB_ID
80517
Accession number
MA 52.26
Creator
Lovelace, Ada King, Countess of, 1815-1852.
Display Date
1843 Sept. 20 .
Credit line
Acquired before, 1923.
Description
1 item (4 p.) ; 19.9 cm
Notes
Mr. Crosse was an English amateur scientist who studied the forces of electricity.
Part of a collection of autograph letters written by Lord Byron, Lady Byron, Catherine Gordon Byron, Contessa Guiccioli, Ada King Lovelace and others from 1788 to 1855. Items in the collection have been described individually in separate catalog records; see collection-level record for more information.
Richard Taylor was the editor (1837-1852) of "Scientific Memoirs: Selections from the Transactions of Foreign Academies and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals".
The published paper to which Lady Lovelace refers in this letter was her translation of Menebrea's paper on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. It was published as Article XXIX in Scientific Memoirs, edited by Richard Taylor, v. III, London, 1843.
Part of a collection of autograph letters written by Lord Byron, Lady Byron, Catherine Gordon Byron, Contessa Guiccioli, Ada King Lovelace and others from 1788 to 1855. Items in the collection have been described individually in separate catalog records; see collection-level record for more information.
Richard Taylor was the editor (1837-1852) of "Scientific Memoirs: Selections from the Transactions of Foreign Academies and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals".
The published paper to which Lady Lovelace refers in this letter was her translation of Menebrea's paper on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. It was published as Article XXIX in Scientific Memoirs, edited by Richard Taylor, v. III, London, 1843.
Summary
Saying she has sent him a "copy of the paper I lately published in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs;" commenting that she has "lived almost entirely secluded. Those who are in earnest & with single mind devoted to any great object in life, must find this occasionally inevitable; & when (as has been my case during the last 10 months), family affairs of a harassing & complicated description, & also very strange & uncertain states of health, are superadded to the first cause, you will not wonder at having heard nothing from me, because you have experience & candor enough to perceive & know that God has not given to us (in this state of existence) more than very limited powers of physical inter-communication & expression of one's ideas & feeling. Would that every thought of mine could be father to the expression of it, to the communication of it to other sentient & thinking beings!;" asking if he can visit and telling him that Mr. Babbage is "likely to be here at the time I mention;" adding that she will "be very desirous of again seeing you. You know what that means from me, & that it is no [illegible] or humbug, but the simple expression & result of the respect & attraction I feel for a mind that ventures to read direct in God's own book, & not merely thro' man's translation of that same vast & mighty work."
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