Lovelace, Ada
See Ada Lovelace 2
Full Name: Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace
Nickname/Alias: Ada Lovelace
Achievements: Computer program
Born: December 10, 1815; London, England
Died: November 29, 1852; London, England (Aged 37)
Field & Discipline: Mathematics; Mathematician
Language: English
Father: Lord (George) Byron
Mother: Annabella Milbanke
Siblings: None
Spouse: William King
Children: 2 sons: Ockham; Ralph. 1 daughter: Anne (married Wilfred Scawen Blunt, poet)
Education: Privately at home
Life & Times:
Ada was the only child of the poet [daughter of] [Byron* and his wife Annabella who split up two months after Ada's birth. She had an unsettled childhood: her mother was a hypochondriac, who moved house frequently and fired any nurse, governess or tutor who had too much influence with her daughter. Ada never saw her father after he left. All copies of his handwriting were hidden from her and a large portrait of him in her grand-mother's house was kept covered by a green curtain.
She was educated at home and at the age of eleven taken on a two-year tour of the continent by her mother, visiting Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France. She had a gift for mathematics and had been helped in her mathematical studies by special tutors , including William Frend, and his pal De Morgan (who got Crookes interested in spiritualism), also friends with Coleridge, Malthus, Godwin and Wordsworth). By the time she made her entry into fashionable society at the age of seventeen, Ada had already decided she was going to be a famous mathematician.
In 1833 she met [patron of] [Babbage* who agreed to give her a demonstration of the calculating machine he had invented. Ada was entranced and began to take every opportunity to meet Babbage and other scientists. In between attending balls and soirees, she organized her own education. She read Mary met] [Somerville's* book "The Connection of the Physical Sciences", attended a series of lectures at the Mechanics' Institute on Babbage's invention, and persuaded her mother to take her on a tour of manufacturing cities where she watched potters, metal workers, cutlers and textile workers producing their goods.
At home she set herself algebra puzzles and worked on astronomical problems, although being a woman she was denied access to an observatory.
She managed to meet [Mary Somerville, an established figure in the scientific world, and was taken by her to lectures and to parties given by Babbage. Through the Somerville connection, Ada met William King, the 8th Baron King, whom she married in 1835 at the age of nineteen. Over the next four years she had three children and became Countess of Lovelace when her husband was created an Earl in 1838.
Ada was increasingly frustrated in trying to pursue her mathematical studies. Somerville had gone to live abroad and a request to Babbage to find her a male tutor had not borne fruit. She continued to educate herself and in 1842 she read an article on Babbage's invention which had been written in French by a young Italian military engineer, Luigi Frederico Menabrea (later prime minister of Italy).
"Notions sur la machine analytique de Charles Babbage" appeared in the BibliothequeUniverselle de Geneve in October 1842 and soon afterwards Ada wrote to tell Babbage she had translated Menabrea's article into English. Babbage suggested she annotate the article. She worked out problems algebraically and fully understood the workings and the possibilities of the machine.
Ada's annotations turned out to be around three times the length of the original article and what she had produced was, in effect, a programme for Babbage's computer.
Babbage has recorded that he offered to write on the computing of Bernoulli numbers but when he did so, Ada had to correct his presentation.
Ada and her husband attempted to promote Babbage's machine and even made some suggestion of buying him out but Babbage had so many other interests that the plan foundered. Ill health interrupted Ada's plans for a scientific career but she kept up her contacts with scientists such as [knew] [Wheatstone * who was then developing the telegraph.
In 1845 Babbage told her that her annotations were too valuable to be an appendage to Menabrea's article. He discussed the matter with Wheatstone and it was decided to publish them as an original paper with her initials at the bottom. Her health remained poor and was not improved by the laudanum she was prescribed, whose sedative effects she counteracted with brandy.
It was around this time that Ada is supposed to have incurred very heavy losses on horse races. There has been much speculation - but no evidence - that Babbage encouraged her and that they used his computer for a betting system. There has also been speculation about blackmail, perhaps involving an affair with a neighbor. Ada borrowed a great deal of money and was anxiously making arrangements for debt repayments during her final illness.
Her mother and husband destroyed many of her letters after her death so the truth remains unknown. She became terminally ill and asked the novelist [visited by] [Dickens*, whom she had met several times, to visit her. Dickens came immediately and they discussed their ideas about life after death.
Assessment: Ada Lovelace's was a gifted mathematician in her own whose talents were undeveloped and under-used. She has sometimes been referred to as the first computer programmer.
Oneliner: Ada Lovelace, daughter to Byron and mathematician
Bibliography:
- Moore, Doris Langley,Ada, Countess of Lovelace,John Murray, London, 1977.
- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution 2014 by Walter Isaacson
- Morais, Betsy "Ada Lovelace, the First Tech Visionary"