Good morning everyone.
>> Good morning.
>> Just to get it out of the way, if you hear a fire alarm,
please follow the green signs there will be no test this morning.
So if you hear it, run in an orderly fashion.
>> [LAUGH] >> I'm Alex Wolf and
I am a professor at Imperial College London in the department of computing.
And I also serve as president of the association for
computing machinery, the ACM.
And it's a great honor, and pleasure to be able to
welcome you to this symposium, and this celebration.
ACM is the oldest and largest international
society of computing scientists, engineers and students.
And so ACM, of course owes a lot
to people like Ada Lovelace for creating a discipline that
has had amazing impact and whose impact yet
I think we don't even, whose bounds I don't think we know or can yet appreciate.
Ada Lovelace is clearly one of the heroes of computing,
and her name has really become synonymous with the birth of computing.
Dare I say that her name has become more,
associated or prominent in some ways than Charles Babbage,
which I think is an interesting turn of history.
I know that my first experience with Ada was,
I realizes that she's 200 years old, but I did have an experience with Ada.
Was as a young, very young student [LAUGH] and
my first serious programming language was named after her.
The Aida programming language.
So whenever I fly on a triple seven or
I take the Paris metro or the New York City subway system,
or sadly, watch a Tomahawk missile being launched.
I think of Ada, and I think of Ada Lovelace, and
I think it's remarkable how her name has spread among not just us,
as computer scientists, but also the general public.
I should say that there are a number of celebrations going on for
this remarkable anniversary.
ACM has issued a book authored by Robin Hammerman and Andrew Russell.
The book is called Ada's Legacy,
Cultures of Computing from the Victorian to the Digital Age.
It's a wonderful book that tells the story and
puts some of her ideas into not only
the context of her time, but also in the context of our time.
There's also of course a number of exhibits, a very important exhibit.
Is at the Weston Library of the Bodleian, sadly just until December 20th.
So you can see some of her papers.
And I think this is the first public exhibit of those papers, so
if you have a chance to go look at that, please do.
Perhaps while you are in Oxford.
Another one is at the science museum right next door to Imperial,
and that one is going until the middle of March.
And then across the ocean in the US, the computer history museum
is also celebrating the birth of Ada Lovelace with an exhibit.
We're talking about how to, ACM is talking with the Computer History Museum
about turning that into a more permanent exhibit at the museum.
And that'll be opening tomorrow I believe.
Tomorrow is the actual birthday.
Today is also another remarkable birthday.
Today is the birthday of Grace Hopper,
admiral Grace Hopper another early pioneer of computing.
Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention another person, George Boole.
George Boole, who is called the Father of Digital Logic, he
also is celebrating his 200th birthday this year,
or celebrated his 200th birthday this year.
My understanding is they did not actually meet,
although they were aware of each others' work.
So let me just quickly give some thanks, there are various
financial supporters and sponsors, and others involved in the event.
Google Teheran Francis
the Clay Mathematics Institute, the London Mathematical Society.
We'd like to, along with ACM, thank them for their participation and support.
In fact, there were about 50 Student funded.
There's 50 students who have been funded to attend this event.
I think it's wonderful that we are including young people into this
discussion.
Because it's they who will carry on her legacy Ada's legacy and
also be the computing in the next generation.
I'd like to thank Percy.
I'd like to thank Vickie Hanson, the vice president of ACM, who's been very involved
in ACM's participation in these celebrations.
And of course, I would like to thank Ursula Martin.
Ursula is certainly the intellectual and spiritual
energy behind this whole series of celebrations,
and we owe her a great debt of gratitude for that work.
And I would like to thank
Ursula.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Okay,
we have a number of very interesting presentations coming up.
And without further ado, I'd like to get started with those in this first session.
Our first speaker is Doron Swade from Royal Holloway.
And I won't be giving any kind of long introductions.
But you could read the biographies of the speakers in the back.
So I will just ask Doron to come up and start his presentation.
One thing, you know that you are not supposed to bring food and
drink other than water into the room.
And, please, for the courtesy of the speaker,
the courtesy of those around you, I would ask that you please not use your
laptops and type in to your laptops,
and prefer that you would close, I say this to my students too.
I ask them to turn their phones to silent, to close their laptops and
to pull anything out of their ears that might be sticking in.
So thank you, Doron, would you like to begin?
>> [APPLAUSE]