Monday 30 November 2015

Ada Lovelace and the Konigsberg Bridge problem

The Weston Library had a display about Ada Lovelace. She is regarded as the first computer programmer. She was a friend of Charles Babbage who designer the first calculating machine and she is credited with writing the first algorithm for a machine like that.

I was interested to see the Konigsberg Bridge problem mentioned. I remember hearing about it when I was at school. Essentially it is a question of whether you can cross seven bridges once in a single journey as they were laid out in the town of Konigsberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg You can read about how Leonard Euler proved it was impossible. It brings up the mathematical concept of "graphing" -  ie drawing networks. I have posted about this before when dealing with knots.