Ada and The Thinking Machines

Preface

Computers are an important part of many people’s lives, and I was curious to learn more about them and how they originated. During my research on the creation and evolution of computing, I learned of Ada Lovelace, a brilliant woman who played a significant role in the development of what is widely considered to be the world’s first computer. I wrote this biographical profile because I felt it was important for more people to know about this remarkable and unique person.—Kathleen Krull

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) grew up in a seriously unusual way. It was more like a science experiment than a childhood: how could her mother, Lady Annabella Byron, raise Ada to be as unlike her father as possible?2Ada never knew her dad, who left England when she was still a baby. Annabella refused to tell her daughter anything about him until after he died in Greece, when Ada was eight. Lord Byron was one of England’s most famous poets. But he was also, in the words of a former girlfriend, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”—the very opposite of Ada’s very proper mother.3Annabella’s friends were horrified when she married the wild Byron, and soon, so was she. During their brief marriage, Byron dubbed his wife the Princess of Parallelograms for her love of geometrical shapes. Annabella was a well-educated woman for her day, especially in math and science, and logical to a fault. She thought she could rescue Byron from his wild life—but shortly after Ada was born, Byron fled, never to return.

Ada’s parents, Annabella and the poet Lord Byron, had a short and unhappy marriage. Byron’s temper and need for excitement dismayed Annabella, and her prim ways drove him crazy.

No Poetry!

Annabella was determined to save her daughter from the dangerous imagination she thought had driven Byron mad. She kept an iron grip on Ada’s days from the moment Ada awoke at 6:00 a.m. until bedtime. She hired scholars to educate Ada at home on every subject—except poetry. They taught Ada only facts, logic, math, languages, and other useful subjects.5Poor Ada had no siblings or playmates. Instead, a group of her mother’s unmarried friends watched over her. If she showed any rebelliousness or bad behavior, like talking too much or riding her horse too often, they reported back to her mother. Ada called them “the Furies" and hated them.6If Ada had a moment to herself, she could be found on the lawn, her cat Puff on her lap, reading a big book like Bingley’s Useful Knowledge. Even her meals were strictly controlled.7Ada decided early on that she was a genius. By the age of eight, she was in love with numbers. Equations and calculations became her delight, and she read all the latest news in science.8One day, Puff the cat dragged in a bird he had killed. The 12-year-old Ada carefully studied its wing. For the next year, she did experiments and research on bird anatomy. She became obsessed with finding a way for humans to fly, even designing wings for herself of paper and wire. She dreamed of a new branch of science, which she called Flyology. At , she drew a complete map of the stars. At 17, one of her tutors gushed that Ada could become “an original mathematical investigator.” Ada felt she was destined for a brilliant future in science—it was just a matter of focusing. Despite her mother’s efforts, she was quite a passionate and imaginative person—just the thing for a scientist.

Marvelous Thinking Machines

10When she was 18, Ada met Charles Babbage, mathematician, inventor, and social butterfly. Every Saturday he invited a crowd of fashionable people to his home to marvel at his collection of amazing machines. Soon Ada was a regular guest.11One of his marvels was the “Silver Dancer,” a beautiful metal automaton (a doll moved by clockwork) that danced on a table holding a flapping metal bird. Visitors loved to watch it twirl, but Ada was more interested in the machinery inside.12Babbage was thrilled by new inventions like steam engines and gas lamps.3 He was also fascinated by a new French invention, the Jacquard loom. Controlled by a series of cards with holes punched in them, these looms could automatically weave complicated patterns in fabrics. This gave Babbage an idea for a similar machine that could be used to solve math problems.13People called his ideas “thinking machines,” but few really understood how they would work. Ada was an exception. She asked for copies of the plans so she could study them. Babbage, in turn, was impressed by Ada. He called her “The Enchantress of Numbers.” They took long walks together, discussing science and math.14When she was 20, Ada married the Earl of Lovelace, a gentleman approved by her mom. He was a bit of an inventor himself. Having three children didn’t slow Ada down. She kept up her math studies and visited Babbage whenever she could.15Meanwhile, Babbage was having a lot of trouble raising money to build his complicated machines. “A very costly toy... worthless,” sniffed the prime minster. Without funds, Babbage’s work stalled.

Ada Sees the Future

16In 1842 Babbage went to Italy to give a talk about his machines. An Italian engineer wrote an article about it in French—a language that Ada knew. Babbage asked her to translate the article into English and invited her to add her own notes.17Ada’s notes ended up being much longer than the original article! She explained exactly how the new Analytical Engine worked and what made it different—a challenge that had defeated other scientists.18Ada did get frustrated—“I am in much dismay at having got into so amazing a quagmire4 & botheration with these Numbers,” she wrote in one letter to Babbage. But she stuck to it until she understood. She even wrote out a set of rules for it to use to solve an algebra problem—an early version of a computer program. It would weave “algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves,” she wrote.19Then she leaped ahead of Babbage. She saw that the machine might be able to do a lot more than crunch numbers. “It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform,” she declared. She envisioned all kinds of uses, from writing new music to figuring out how much fabric to buy for a gown. She was talking about the modern computer in a way no one else was at the time. It was all about information, not just numbers. It was an imaginative leap worthy of her poet father.20When the notes were published, she felt satisfied that at 28 she had at last become “a completely professional person.”21Unfortunately, Ada’s later life was mostly unhappy. She tried to use math to bet on horse races and lost a lot of money. Often ill, she finally died of cancer at the young age of 36. At her own request, Ada was buried in the Byron family vault, beside the father she had never known.22It took almost 100 years for Ada’s and Babbage’s ideas to catch on. In the 1940s, the first modern computers were built using much quicker electric signals instead of gears—but as Ada had envisioned, they could do much more than just math. And when the United States Department of Defense created a new computer language in 1980, they called it Ada, in honor of the visionary Countess Ada Lovelace.