This was done, she wrote, by “the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs.” Even more than Babbage, Ada realized the significance of this. It meant that the machine could be like the type of computer we now take for granted: one that does not merely do a specific arithmetic task but can be a general-purpose machine.
