'The Enchantress of Numbers'
Ada Lovelace was born in London, December 10th,1815. Ada’s parents were polar opposites. her dad was Lord George Byron, a well-known poet, and her mum was Lady Anne Isabella Milbanks Byron. They weren’t married for long, a few weeks after Ada was born her mother moved her out of London and away from her dad. Her mother was worried Ada would get her dads ‘Volatile and poetic temperament’. Her dad moved to Greece a couple months after Ada was born and died when she was 8. Unlike most girls her age Ada’s mother encouraged her to learn academic subjects such as science and maths, she was tutored by very well-respected people such as; Mary Sumerville who was a Scottish astronomer, mathematician and one of the first women to be accepted into the Royal Astronomical Society. Her mother did everything she could to make sure Ada didn’t turn out like her dad even making her lie down still for long periods of time to teach her patience and self-restraint. When Ada was 12, she decided to learn the science of how birds could fly. Ada examined bird’s bodies, feathers and wings and created an illustrated thesis called ‘Flyoligy’. When she was 17, she went to a party to make her début, at the party she met scientist and mathematician Charles Babbage. Babbage and Ada became life-long friends and he would later describe her as, ‘The Enchantress of Numbers’. When they met Babbage was working on his invention ‘The Difference Machine’ and invited Ada to see it, the machine had a number of wheels, different positions on the each wheel reflected numbers from 0-9, when one wheel was moved it could then alter the movement of another wheel, allowing it to answer complex calculations. In 1835 Ada married William King who later became Earl of Lovelace and she became Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. The couple had 3 children and an active social life; socialising with scientist Michael Faraday and writer Charles Dickens. In 1837 Ada became ill after catching cholera (an infectious disease caused by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with vibrio cholerae) she was given painkillers such as; Laudanum and Opium. The drugs affected her mental health she began having severe mood swings and experiencing hallucinations. Throughout her illness and changes in personal life Ada and Babbage stayed close. Ada assisted Babbage in each of his new inventions including the ‘Analytical Engine’, the engines aim was to answer much more complex calculations than the ‘Difference Machine’. Babbage visited Turin a city in Italy to present his thesis; here he met politician and mathematician Luigi Frederico Menabrea, who agreed to write a paper on the machine. Menabrea’s paper was published and had around 8,000 words, Ada was asked to translate it. Whilst translating the paper Ada added her own notes, her final work ended up being 3x longer than Menabrea’s original paper. In her notes she compared the ‘Anylitical Engine’ to a ‘Jaquard Loom’. A ‘Jaquard Loom’ was invented by Joseph- Marie Jacquard, it used to weave intricate patterns. The machine worked by using a number of cards that had holes in them, the holes dictated where the needle could and couldn’t go, which in turn instructed the machine on how to weave material. Ada explained that Babbage used the same theory with the ‘Analytical Engine’, the engine followed instructions based on patterns created by holes in the interchangeable cards, allowing it to make calculations. The reason Ada has been nicknamed ‘the first computer programmer’ is not because of these detailed notes but because of the suggestions and predictions that she added to her notes. Ada was the first person to suggest the idea of coding, she theorised that codes could be created that could reflect numbers, symbols and letters which would allow a machine to follow very detailed instructions. Today coding is used in all of our smart devices to tell them what to do. We use binary code, which is a pattern of ‘1s’ and ‘0s’, it could be compared to the Jaquard Loom as each time the needle goes through a hole it is a ‘1’ and each time the needle can’t go through the whole was a ‘0’ (coding is much more complex then this and you are able to use symbols other than ‘1’ and ‘0’, but I am defiantly not a coder and this is the only I can remotely understand it). Ada also theorised the idea of ‘Looping’ this is where an engine could repeat a series of instructions. Ada was well ahead of her time, it would be another 100 years before anyone would make her theories a reality.
References
You can buy the book on amazon, ‘Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage: Translation by Ada Lovelace: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sketch-Analytical-Invented-Charles-Babbage/dp/B086G3XNS4
BBC History, Charles Babbage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/babbage_charles.shtml
Cholera Definition: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cholera/
History of Information, Luigi Menabrea: http://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=546
About Ada:
The Startup- Ada Lovlace, her Objection, Turing Tests and Universal Computing by Mark Ryan https://medium.com/swlh/ada-lovelace-her-objection-e189717bd262
Science Museum- Ada Lovelace, Turing and the invention of computers: https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/lovelace-turing-and-invention-computers
Computer History Museum, Ada Lovelace: https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/
Science and Industry Museum- Programming Patterns: The History of the Jacquard Loom: https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/jacquard-loom
Ada Lovelace Day: https://findingada.com/
The New Yorker Ada Lovelace, the first tech visionary:
Biography Ada Lovelace: https://www.biography.com/scholar/ada-lovelace
The difference Engine:
Images:
Science and Industry Museum, ‘Programming patterns: the history of the Jacquard Loom’
EU- Startups, Portrait of Ada Love lace:
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