Babbage had gone to Turin in 1840 to give a lecture on his Analytical Engine. The only person to take any notes was an Italian engineer called Luigi Menabrea. He published these notes a couple of years later in French, in a French journal. Then, as now, Europeans are likely to speak more than one language, while the English don’t bother. In the sunny uplands of Brexit, this legacy of Empire will have to change. Ada, though, was female, and had the usual accomplishments of an upper-class woman destined to entertain Important Men at Dinner Parties. She was fluent in French. She decided to
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