The Mother of Computers
Ada Lovelace
Annabella Byron was very strict regarding the studies of her daughter and ensured that Ada had lessons in mathematics, science, music and languages. Unlike the women of that time, Annabella herself was trained in mathematics and was not particularly enamored by the imagination her daughter had inherited from her father because she perceived it as “dangerous and potentially destructive”. She attempted to steer her towards logical, rather than fanciful pursuits. However, twelve-year-old Ada was looking for a way to soar through the skies. Her approach to her obstacle was systematic, studying birds and exploring materials suitable for wings such as feathers, paper, and silk. Ada meticulously documented her observations and experiments in a guide titled "Flyology," complete with illustrations, until her mother intervened, chastising her for neglecting her studies.
Ada Lovelace met Charles Babbage when she was only seventeen, at a party where she heard him talking about something he called the “Difference Engine”. Her mother took her over to Babbage’s residence to watch him demonstrate the prototype he had built. This machine was enough to give wings to both Ada’s natural ingenuity as well as her analytical skills, and thus began the correspondence between her and Babbage, regarding this machine and eventually mathematics, logic and other subjects. Babbage was greatly impressed by her mathematical knowledge and encouraged her ambition.
The “Analytical Engine” built by Babbage found its interpreter in Ada, who envisioned the true computational potential of this machine, far surpassing Babbage’s conception of it as a mechanical calculator. Italian engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea had written the first manual for the Analytical Engine from Babbage’s lecture. While translating this document from French, Ada added her own notes to her version and increased the original length to nearly three times the original with her interpretation.
Her biggest achievement came in the way of writing a complex algorithm for this machine that would be able to calculate Bernoulli numbers. The interesting thing about this note (called “Note G” in the appendix) is that she used a highly intricate method (a recursive equation to generate the 8th number in this sequence) to demonstrate the ability of this machine to solve complex functions. She did not choose the simplest way of calculating these numbers, because she wanted to show how powerful this machine was. She was also able to visualize that this machine would be able to work on things beyond numbers, as long as they followed mathematical rules. Lady Byron’s attempts to suppress the artistic DNA that Ada inherits from her father did not work quite as well as she might have hoped. Ada maintained that this machine could be used to create music and art, saying, “Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose… pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”
This manual was published under the initials “A.A.L” in 1843 in Richard Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs. It ran to a length of 66 pages, of which 41 included her own notes and appendices. This is effectively the first paper that laid the groundwork for the development of modern programming languages and software engineering. Charles Babbage, in a letter to Michael Faraday, described her as “that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force which few masculine intellects (in our own country at least) could have exerted over it.”
With her incredible mathematical abilities and her potential for imagination, Ada was a trailblazer in her own right. She had been denied the possibility of attending any school or university, as was the norm of that time. However, she also had opportunities that other young girls and women in her era never had- she came from a background of privilege, hence she had access to private tutors and educators. So she had the advantage of an education and did not have to suffer the same as her peers. Her mother Annabella was an educated woman, dubbed the “Princess of Parallelograms” by her husband and Ada’s father Lord Byron. She understood and prioritized education for her daughter, especially mathematics. Her position in society ensured that she was able to come across many famous scientists, inventors and authors. Ada’s husband and father to her three children, William King, was supportive and would often go to libraries to copy books that Ada would need for her work because as a woman, she was not permitted inside the library.
I mention these “privileges” that Ada Lovelace had over her female peers, not to diminish her achievements in any way, but to remind us that we were very possibly robbed of other such incredible women, simply because they were born at the wrong time, or had the wrong social standing in their time, which ensured that they would never get a chance to be a pioneer. Even Ada’s own contributions were significantly overlooked at her time, and she did not get much opportunity to work on the analytical engine after this paper.
Ada died at only 36 years of age, buried next to a father she never knew. Despite her pioneering contributions, Ada Lovelace's work remained largely unrecognized during her lifetime. The Analytical Engine was never completed, and Ada's notes were not widely circulated outside academic circles. However, her legacy endured, and in the latter half of the 20th century, Ada's contributions to computing began to receive the recognition they deserved.
Ada’s story serves as a reminder that talent knows no gender and that with perseverance, anything is possible. Despite the obstacles she faced as a woman in a male-dominated field, Ada's pioneering work laid the foundation for modern computing and continues to inspire generations of innovators. Her legacy as the world's first computer programmer is a testament to the power of vision, intellect, and determination and is an inspiration to generations of women in STEM fields . She may have been a daughter, a wife, a mother, but she is remembered as a skilled mathematician, who defied conventions and chose her own path.
References :
Hollings, C., Martin, U., & Rice, A. C. (2018). Ada Lovelace: the making of a computer scientist. Bodleian Library.
Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, May 8). Ada Lovelace. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Wolfram, S. (2015, December 22). Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/
Biography.com Editors. (2021, May 6). Ada Lovelace - Quotes, Children & Facts. Biography. https://www.biography.com/scholars-educators/ada-lovelace
