"The Analytical Engine has no pretentions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform."
— Computers

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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ThemesTechnologyComputer science
Original Language: English

Sources

Ada Lovelace, An Account of the Analytical Engine, 1842, reprinted in Faster than Thought, ed. B.V. Bowden (Pitman, 1953), cited in Andrew Hodges Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence (Unwin 1985) (probably the first known instance of "Computers can only do what they are programmed to do")