OT Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

   I read this fascinating quote today and mused about what the history
   of electronic music algorithmic composition
   might have been had this remarkable woman not died so young (she
   passed from Uterine Cancer at the age of 36)

   "[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number,
   were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be
   expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which
   should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the
   operating notation and mechanism of the engine...

   Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched
   sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were
   susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might
   compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of
   complexity or extent.^"
   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#cite_note-58>

   ^Ada Lovelace - 1842

   ^credited as being the 1st computer programmer
   for her theoretical work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine
   which was never actually built in her lifetime.
   ^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#cite_note-58>