talking about steve jobs. i think we even showed it. at every at every product launch she had an intersection of the liberal arts and technology which is what ada lovelace was, was her father being a romantic poet. she helped create that intersection where the true creativity happens in the digital age. >> there is a thesis in the book that i want to spend out. you wrote the key to innovation, creative geniuses generating innovative ideas, practical engineers partner closely to turn concepts into contraptions and collaborative teams work to turn it into product. you believe in that ecosystem and refer to it again and again genius and

the practical engineer and the process of collaboration babbage and lovelace had their own form of that from early on. >> he called her my views. we should not overstate her. she was in some ways not as great a mathematician as she would like to believe but could generate and understand the sequence of bernoulli numbers and make a chart a chart which becomes the first published program. we should all celebrated. [applauding] yes. i say, okay. tell me the seventh, eighth, ninth in the sequence of bernoulli numbers and how you would do a chart on a mechanical processor like that one to generate them. then people understand what a partnership she had and how important she was to babbage trying to create

what he thought was a numerical calculator, but she has the insight that it is not just for numbers. her mom had taken her to the midlands of england to look at the mechanical weaving runs using punch cards. you have them downstairs and this museum. the punch cards of the shop card looms of the industrial revolution that she saw. her father lord byron was a let ike and i mean that literally. the only speech he gives is defending the followers of ned laud who were smashing those looms. disruptive technology goes back a long time. so instead of thinking, yes, these machines these machines are bad she says, zero, these punch cards she

has a line in her wonderful set of notes she does where she says, it we will make the machine be able to read patterns just like the womb. then she says, the machine we will be able to do anything that can be notated symbolically, not just numbers but words. it will make music, do pictures patterns. in other words it we will be a computer. she is pretty awesome. >> you she is pretty awesome. >> you.out she is simultaneously may be one of the most over appreciated and underappreciated people in the history of computing. why is that? >> she is grabbed onto sometimes. there are a lot of good books about her. all of her wonderful letters and she is very favorable to ada's role.

a couple of other books on the analytical and charles babbage. the most scientific book is dorothy stines ada, which does it in balance but there is such a controversy. i kind of like controversy. but i kind of explain, there is some guy who did a phd at harvard and rights ada was a manic-depressive with the most amazing delusions about her talent mad as a hatter and contributed little more than trouble. you have people -- that is a footnote by the way. >> right. >> i think you do not have to overstate her accomplishments in order to totally marvel at how

wonderful it was she saw the magic and humanity that could be connected to the machine. i try as i do in all the books. the the interesting thing about the digital age is it is very collaborative. afterwards afterwards they fight over who deserves the most credit. helped with the engineer and even now their are all these things. i did more. i did more. i try very judiciously to say here is some of the dispute, but by the way this revolution is so amazing there is enough credit to go around. >> we have four stories. we started with babbage and lovelace. the second is the enigma which we we will talk about in a minute.

and in the middle we we will talk about the eniac women. let's turn to alan turing and code breaking. you do something interesting, explore the magical year of 1947 when everything seems to be converging. >> one of the things about history of technology is that it is not totally revolutionary. we build upon things but every now and then it is punctuated. as a combination of analytic science like claude shannon and people understanding how algebra which allows you to do logical sequence is based simply on on off switch is

next to the fact that they have vacuum tubes and can make circuits with on-off switches. so in other places they make these advances using algebra. algebra. and you have turing who has many things he does. let's start with ada lovelace. as i told you, you, a machine we will be able to do everything. but there is one thing and machine we will never be able to do. that is drink. so that is her objection. one hundred years later he is reading the notes and calling the objections. he comes up with a test. how do we know machines will never think? you send questions and.

you cannot you cannot tell the difference. there is no empirical reason you can have a lot of people who say that is not a good test but it is ingrained into how we look at artificial intelligence. the movie is coming out called the imitation game. now, i think that two strands of computer history the combination of humans and machines will always be more powerful than just machines doing artificial intelligence alone which is one of the scenes i try to explore in the book. talking about how the two machines built in the end become more powerful when combined with the imagination of humans. then we get to leslie park.

he goes to this secret facility that they have in england. that machine is an enigma machine which codes the german messages. fortunately the polish intelligence originally captured, and so they are able to slowly break out the code was done. one of the amazing things done is figure out along with tommy flowers how you would make something called colossus which is the first real electronic operable computer and they use it to break the german cover. when we argue about the first computer one contender if you are thinking it has to be electronic, work do

logical sequences probably ought to be digital, colossus breaking the code done on that machine. >> and there are a few other players which you cover. john vincent at nassau. you you explore that story in detail. >> someone here who created. >> we do. >> there he is over there. he there. he has read part of the book. i do not give credit for truly building the first machine. machine. but he told me it was all right. here is the argument. he does not fit into the notion of someone who has a collaborative team a bit of a loner. he thinks of this machine in and drive in an oldsmobile.

iowa was a dry a dry state and he comes up with the notion of using circuits electronic circuits to do logical processing and builds one in the basement at iowa state with a graduate student with no team, and they get it pretty good. but they can never fully get it working because they do not have mechanics and engineers. they did not quite work. the middle of the war. in the end they have no idea what it is an throw it away it away which is why you have to re-create it. so in some ways vision without execution is just hallucination. i i don't think he could be called the first computer.

>> let's turn to the one that you do talk about and prefer in the pecking order of first computers working on at the school. >> typical of the great innovators of the digital age someone who loved to love to go around and pick up ideas wherever he went. one of those people who loved coming to places like this hearing lectures, going to dinners. he flips around to places like the 1939 world's fair bell labs, harvard and nonelectronic electromechanical computer. and he even runs into the sky.

he gets in the car with this kid and drives to iowa state and looks at the machine and takes notes goes back. when he gets back he gets a really good engineer, six women who become the mathematical programmers people who no tell 2000 how to help help greece under their folder -- fingernails, a part of it on loan from the smithsonian and it is the first working machine. it is also reprogrammable fully electronic unlike iowa state, and it actually works. i tend to say if you are

looking for the one that really worked, that is programmable, programmable digital, and electronic, that is the first computer. pretty much special purpose, just breaking code. this this you could have cables replied and have it do other things. typically typically we collaborate and take ideas from one another. everybody takes each other's ideas. ideas. of course apple sues microsoft. not surprisingly there was like 15 years of a lawsuit. in the commercial form they start enforcing patents at which.honeywell wants to break the patents and comes and finds adam nassau. that guy came and visited me and took my ideas. you have a lawsuit over who deserves the patents.

in the end the court ruled against the eniac people but did not award the patents to anyone. >> we have a trustee, a very famous figure in computer history who calls that lawsuit that this invention of the computer. >> exactly. with all due respect to the lawyers in the room it is best not to leave the whole notion of historical invention to copyright lawsuits. there is a wonderful one where jack kilby at texas instruments and bob noyce and gordon moore almost simultaneously do the microchip. that is a huge lawsuit for many years but they were both such decent people. they always gave each other credit. that suit went on and on and on. finally they just got together and shook hands