Born in December 10, 1815........ Died in 1852 of cancer, aged 36
"Enchantress of Numbers" (quoted by Charles Babbage)
One of England's most famous poet + An amateur mathematician =
the world's first computer programmer!
The beginning...
Marriage
The first computer programmer
The fall
Epilogue
Timeline
Bibliography
It was around the Victorian age and the time of Jane Austen. It was a time when upper-class young men or "gentlemen" went routinely to a university to finish their education while women were thought to be too frail for serious thoughts. The training of young ladies were completely up to her parents, particularly her mother. The only thing important for young ladies at that time was marriage. Young ladies learned drawing, dancing and music, and read history, poetry, and literature. Intellectual women were viewed more as "freaks". Nobles keep up the appearances appropriate to the nobility regardless of the actual penury. This included fine cloths, servants of both sexes, carriage full of horses, a ready supply of pocket money, etc. If a gentleman was in debt, he must "mend his fortune" by marrying a woman with 2 or 3 hundred thousand pounds (which was what Lord Byron did). It was usual to marry cousins as it was seen to be one of the ways to keep the family fortune together.
The beginning
Great poet Lord George Byron, at age 25, fell in love with his married half sister, Augusta Leigh. In January 1815, Byron married Annabella Milbanke. After being married to Lord Byron for little more than a year, Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter. Byron named this daughter after his half sister. Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10, 1815, in a house overlooking London's Green Park. The couple were incompatible. Lord Byron, one of the most famous poet in England, was fiercely temperamental, passionate, and slightly mad. Anabella was an amateur mathematician, and a cool rationalist. The couple separated 5 weeks after Ada was born. Shortly afterward, rumours about Byron's affairs with Augusta destroyed his reputation and social acceptability, forcing him to go abroad, never returning to England. From time to time, Byron threatened to take Ada from Annabella to be raised by Augusta, but never did so. Subsequent letters and much of his poetry show tender concern for the child he never saw again. On his deathbed, he wrote to Augusta Leigh for news of his daughter. Lady Byron's reply was:
"Her prevailing characteristic is cheerfulness and good temper. Observation. Not devoid of imagination, but is chiefly exercised in connection with her mechanical ingenuity... the manufacture of ships and boats etc. Prefers prose to verse, because puzzled by poetical diction. Not very persevering. Draws well. Open and ingenuous. Temper now under control. Tall and robust."
Lord Byron died on April 19, 1824 in Greece at 36, when Ada was 8 years old.
Lady Byron brought Ada up (obviously no longer called Augusta) to be as unlike Byron as possible by setting herself as a role model while hinting of unspeakable evil in her Lord Byron's character. She encouraged Ada's mathematical talent but discouraged any traits that reminds her of Byron. Ada was naturally curious and spent a great deal of time on her studies. Her first love was geography, which was soon replaced by mathematics.
Vegetables were not then a well-regarded source of nourishment for the upper classes, and fruit was actually considered harmful to children! At one point, Lady Byron announced that she ate "nothing but meat eggs and biscuit". Medical doctors prescribed metallic salts such as antimony and zinc, which can actually be quite toxic. Doctors had believed in treating diseases by bloodletting (as people of that believed fevers, swellings, excitements were associated by an excess of blood which carried impurities). Lady Byron also believed in bloodletting. Under the supervision of a mother with such dietary and medical regimes, it was not surprising that Ada developed a delicate stomach in her early childhood.
At the age of 14, Ada got an attack of measles and suffered from a severe paralytic illness which made her unable to walk for almost three years. Her recovery might actually have been delayed by the prolonged and stringent bed rest, which itself can weaken muscle tone, and the medical treatments which Lady Byron believed in. Ada was only permitted to sit up for only half an hour to an hour a day. Woronzow Greig, the son of Mary Somerville, a close family friend, had described Ada in her teens as "rather stout and inclined to be clumsy, without colour and in delicate health..." A friend of Lord Byron recorded in his diary that "she is a large coarse-skinned young woman... I was exceedingly disappointed." Ada continued her mathematical studies and became an accomplished musician and linguist. Young ladies at that time of Ada's social class were taught by tutors, some of whom were famous scientists at that time, such as Augustus De Morgan, a family friend of Ada, and Mary Somerville, a very famous mathematician of the time. Ada was introduced to Mary Somerville at the age of 17. Somerville had mentioned a bit about Ada in her autobiography.
"Ada was much attached to me, and often came to stay with me. It was by my advice that she studied mathematics. She always wrote to me for an explanation when she met with any difficulty. Among my papers I lately found many of her notes, asking mathematical questions. Ada Byron married Lord King, afterwards created Earl of Lovelace, a college companion and friend of my son."
Mary Somerville
Marriage
In 1935, at the age of 19, Ada married William, Lord King, who is 10 years her senior and outlived her by 40 years!! Lord King was created the first Earl of Lovelace 3 years after the marriage and therefore Ada was known as Countess of Lovelace after that. They had 3 children, 2 sons and a daughter. The couple had enjoyed a warm relationship. Lord Lovelace was supportive and encouraged her to continue corresponding with famous scientists. He had accepted Ada's talents and seemed to take pride in her accomplishments.
Earl of Lovelace, photo taken
in the 1850s.
The First Computer Programmer
In June 5, 1833, when Ada was 18, she met Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine, at a party. Babbage invited her to visit the studio where he kept his invention. Sophia De Morgan recorded the scene of the viewing of the Difference machine as follows:
"While other visitors gazed at the workings of this beautiful instrument with the sort of expression, and I dare say the sort of feeling, that some savages are sad to have shown on first seeing a looking-glass or hearing a gun - if, indeed, they had as strong an idea of its marvelousness - Miss Byron, young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention."
Ada was Fascinated by Babbage's invention and began corresponding with Babbage regularly, learning as much as she could about his invention and ideas.
Charles Babbage
It was a time when women were viewed as being too frail for serious thoughts. However, Ada continued exploring her passion for mathematics. Lady Byron had brought up Ada to be a mathematician and scientist because of her fear of Ada ending up a poet like Lord Byron. Despite that, Ada hoped to be "an analyst and a metaphysician". "If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me poetical science?" She wrote to her mother at the age of 30. Her understanding of mathematics was laced with imagination, and described in metaphors.
Babbage's Difference Engine was a machine designed to perform simple mathematical calculations. It was capable of storing numbers and performing additions and subtractions. Babbage's ideas for improvement of the Engine led to his second invention, the Analytical Engine - the world's first computer. However, unlike the Difference Engine, the Analytical Engine had never been constructed. It only existed in Babbage's mind and papers. The government support which Babbage relied on was running out, no one understood his ideas for the Analytical Engine, and eventually, the cost to support the research became too great, so the Analytical Engine couldn't be constructed.
Ada was one of the few people who had understood the Analytical Engine, and became the outspoken advocate of Babbage's invention. In October, 1842, L.F. Menebrea, an Italian mathematician and ambassador to France, delivered a paper at a meeting in Geneva describing the function and theory of Babbage's Analytical Engine. Ada proposed that she translate the paper from the French in order to make it available to English readers. As Ada's "Notes" developed, it became 3 times longer than Menebrea's paper. Ada's "Notes" of the Analytical Engine wasn't just a translation, it included the set of instructions, and her speculations of its possible uses. The new work was so superior to the original that Babbage thought it should be an original paper. However, Ada disagreed, feeling that she had made a commitment to the publishers to produce a translation. She was soon credited with the concept of programming of Analytical Engine, becoming the first programmer and inventor of programming. The time period was not in favour of a practising woman mathematician and Ada signed only her quiet initials, A.A.L. The notes were published in 1843 (at the age of 27) in a collection of notes in Richard Taylor's Scientific Memoirs series. It is for this accomplishment that she is now remembered by the scientific community. Ada had the best interpretation and description of the Analytical Engine, better than Babbage. Babbage's descriptions of the Analytical Engine was difficult to follow. Her "Notes" were the first concrete descriptions of Babbage's invention.
Included in her notes were some famous quotes about the Analytical Engine. Ada's creative critical skills not only laid the groundwork for her ability to write the first computer program but correctly predict the future of computing. In note A, she made a detailed comparison between the Analytical Engine and the Difference Engine.
"The Difference Engine can merely tabulate and is incapable of developing, the Analytical Engine can either tabulate or develop."
She also described how information was fed into the Analytical Engine on punched cards, like the Jacquard loom was programmed to weave patterned fabrics.
"We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."
Ada even predicted computer music. "Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of the pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."
Ada then cautioned in the last note against overrating computers. "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis, but it has no power of anticipating any analytical revelations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with."
Ada had stressed the ability of the Analytical Engine to be programmed (to act on general instructions supplied on the operation cards). She provided numerous examples such as demonstrations of how it would compute trigonometric functions containing variables, examples of how the engine would do difficult problems without error, and most notably, her detailed example of how the engine would compute the Bernoulli numbers - which is what sets Ada apart as the "first computer programmer". It is in fact a program that illustrates how a function would be computed by the engine without having first been computed by hand.
The Fall
Ada was in poor health throughout her life. At the age of 29, after the birth of her third child, Ada began to suffer both a mental and physical breakdown. She had frequent digestive and breathing problems. Her doctor advised her to use dangerous combinations of brandy, wine, beer, opium, and morphine, which led to serious mental disorders. Ada had somewhat a stout adolescence and seemed to have became more liable to periods of anorexia. She also had menstrual disorders. She suffered mood swings. After a few years, Ada realised that the drugs are disastrous, and managed to overcame the addictions through will power, but fell into a new obsession: horse race gambling. The habit of gambling led Ada to become so serious in debt that she became a victim of scandal and blackmail and had to pawn family jewels, which she was to suffer pain and remorse over. Ada's health fails over these years.
1852,
Ada knew she was dying
Ada Lovelace died of cancer at the age of 36 on November 27, 1852. At her own request, she was buried beside her father in Hucknall Torkard church in Nottinghamshire.
Epilogue
Physically, the Ada and her father are said to have been very much alike: Ada inherited her father's fine features and dark, romantic good looks. Both died young, at exactly the same age - 36! (Actually, Lord Byron's father, Mad Jack, also died at 36!!!) In their lives, both experienced periods of great achievement as well as periods of disgrace. Yet, for all their similarities, their interests and occupations were in stark contrast. For the next 100 years, Ada would be known as the daughter of Lord Byron the poet. Only in this century would she become known as the first computer programmer. To honour her memory, the US Navy named one of its computer languages, ADA.
Timeline
22 January 1788: Birth of Ada's father
26 December 1791: Birth of Charles Babbage
17 May 1792: Birth of Ada's mother
21 February 1805: Birth of Ada's husband
2 January 1815: Marriage of Ada's parents
10 December 1815: Birth of Agusta Ada Byron
15 January 1816: Lady Byron separates from her husband
25 April 1816: Lord Byron leaves England, never to return alive
19 April 1824: Lord Byron dies at Missolonghi, Greece
1826-28: Lady Byron and Ada take a grand tour of the Continent
May 1829: Ada had an attack of measles, which prevented her to walk for 3 years
1832-34: Babbage develops plans for the Analytical Engine
5 June 1833: Ada meets Babbage
Spring 1834: Ada meets Mary Somerville and her son Woronzow Greig
February 1835: Ada suffers a nervous breakdown
8 July 1835: Ada marries Lord King after a brief courtship
12 May 1836: Birth of first son, Byron Noel
1 July 1836: Babbage decides to use punched cards with his engine
22 September 1837: Birth of daughter, Anne Isabella King
30 June 1838: Lord King created Earl of Lovelace
2 July 1839: Birth of son, Ralph Gordon Noel King
June 1840: Ada begins to study mathematics with Augustus De Morgan
August 1840: Babbage goes to Turin to discuss the Analytical Engine
Autumn 1841: Ada suffers a more serious breakdown
1842: De Morgan's Treatise on the Differential and Integral Mathematics published
October 1842: L.F. Menabrea's memoir on the Analytical Engine published
August 1843 : Ada's translation of the Menabrea memoir
1851: Ada leads a gambling confederacy and suffers disastrous losses
June 1851: Ada has a series of severe hemorrhages; her doctors eventually agree on a diagnosis of cervical cancer
27 November 1852: Ada dies
16 May 1860: Lady Byron dies
18 October 1871: Charles Babbage dies
29 December 1893: Lord Lovelace dies
Bibliography
Math Equals - Biographies of Women Mathematicians + Related Activities
by Tery Perl
http://acm.ewu.edu/homepage/krudin/wic/adasrch.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8916/byron.html
Ada, A Life and a Legacy by Dorothy Stein
(C) 1998 by Yvonne Wang