Body- Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada Byron was a born in 1815 to Lord and Lady Byron. Lord Byron was a famous poet, but not long after Ada’s birth her mother and father separated, leaving her mother with full custody of Ada. Lady Byron “left the marriage with a bad impression of poets,” she saw “helplessness, imprudence, vanity, prevarication and conceit” (Y Al-ammar, 1). Due to her dislike for the influence of the Arts, Lady Byron desired for her daughter to become a mathematician and scientist. Ada never knew her father who died in Greece in 1823, and while she did ultimately followed her mother’s wishes, pieces of her father were within her as well, and that imagination would aide in her later successes.
Ada’s “first love was geography, but this was soon replaced with a new passion, mathematics;”(Freeman,1) Ada later referred to herself as an “analyst and a metaphysician” (Freeman, 1). The Victorian Age was the time period in which Ada grew up, and at this time society viewed women as “being too frail for serious thought… while women were not allowed to attend University or private clubs where much of the scientific research and discussion took place, they were allowed to attend public lectures, and many began to take greater interest in academic learning” (Freeman, 1). Ada was among this group of women pushing gender boundaries by attending such lectures and university, and she continued this theme throughout her life through constant education and illuminating inequality among colleagues when it existed.
After attending university and lectures, and prior to her further one on one study with multiple scientists, Ada was herself a teacher. Ada had taken it upon herself to teach the two daughters of Lady Gosford, a friend of her mother Lady Byron. Ada worked hard to reveal to her students the importance of both understanding mathematics as well as having a passion for mathematics. “She used every method she could to get across her mathematical message. First, she tried to build and esprit de corps (spirit)…Then she evoked the visual…Then metaphor slips into the conversation. Ada tried to show her students the beauty of mathematics”(Toole, article 6). While Ada was teaching she began to receive instruction on of her own by a Dr. King a man who would become her husband, and first to acknowledge that Ada’s knowledge surpassed his own, a reality that revealed the greatness that Ada would reveal in years to come.
One individual who quite possibly had the greatest effect on Ada’s professional career was scientist Charles Babbage.
Charles Babbage
The two shared a “collaborative working relationship” (Abbate, 5) Their relationship was possible due to the encouragement that Ada received from her husband William King, whom Ada married in 1835 and later had three children with. It was three years after their marriage that King was named the first Earl of Lovelace, making Ada Countess of Lovelace. Ada’s husband not only encouraged her to continue her correspondence with Babbage, but was also very “supportive of her mathematical studies” (Freeman, 1) He understood Ada’s intelligence and encouraged her to work with Babbage and investigate his invention.
Charles and Ada met at a party when Ada was only 18 years old. Charles, the inventor of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, invited Ada to visit his studio, an offer that Ada took two weeks later with her mother’s company.
Difference Engine
Analytical Engine
At this point it was Babbage’s first invention, the Difference Engine, that fascinated Ada and the two began to correspond regularly. Babbage’s intention with the Difference Engine was to “produce error-free numerical tables of various kinds, a task which seemed beyond the capabilities of fallible human beings” (Stein, 5). Thus, Babbage had created the first calculator. The Difference Engine was just the beginning for Babbage and as he continued his studies with the Difference Engine he was passionate about expanding his ideas. Improvements of the Difference Engine lead Babbage to his next invention and most significant invention, the Analytical Engine.
Ada “became fascinated by the idea [of improving the Difference Engine] and ended up working on the concept with Babbage for nine years” (Y Al-aamar, 1). The Analytical Engine became the “world’s first computer.” “He was inspired by the principle of division of labor. During a time when mathematical tables had to be laboriously computed by hand by human ‘computers,’ he saw that machine automation of these tasks, which required precision and repetition, would speed up the process and reduce errors” (Freeman, 1). Ada read through Babbage’s notes on his new project and she became enthralled in his ideas and with the encouragement of Babbage made many of her own remarks. “Ada had no shortage of ideas on Babbage’s theories and she accepted the invitation and wrote extensively” (Y Al-ammar, 2). The notes that Ada added to Babbage’s original text were three times longer than the text itself. Due to Ada’s intelligence Babbage continued to seek her opinion and for the next several years, and during that course of time Ada herself began to write down some of her own predictions and inventions.
Ada’s remarks on Babbage’s work was published and entitled “Notes.” During the process of making remarks on Babbage’s work Ada herself made predictions of her own that were found to be true over 100 years later. Among some of these predictions was the prediction that “Babbage’s machine might one day be used to compose music, produce graphical content, and be useful in practical and scientific ways” (Y Al-ammar, 2). One of Ada’s most famous quotes came from a passage she wrote about the Analytical Engine, stating that it;
might act upon other things besides numbers, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. 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 elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity of extent (Y Al-ammar, 2-3).
This statement was published in 1843 in her “Notes” on Babbage’s new machine, and it was important to both Babbage and others due to the fact that Babbage was unable to easily explain his ideas to others, especially those who did not have adequate mathematical knowledge.
Ada's "Notes"
“Ada’s Notes foreshadowed the capability of the modern computer and the impact such a development would have on the language of science” (Toole, book 174). Ada was most likely able to break the concept down for those who were not mathematically inclined due to her previous teaching experiences. Ada however, in her “Notes,” was able to provide “the first concrete description of Babbage’s invention” (Freeman, 2). Without Ada’s notes on the Difference Engine Babbage would not have had the success he had in creating the Analytical Engine, and without her description of the Analytical Engine the public would not have been able to understand the invention. In response to her notes “Ada received a letter at this time from John Kemble, a respected philologist and the editor of a philosophical review. According to his letter, there must have been a skirmish in the battle of the sexes.” This attempt to undermine the capabilities of women upset Ada as she stood for the progress of women, due to the fact that he was a gentleman, Kemble later apologized for “the impression of undervaluing the intellectual capabilities of women” (Toole, book 195). As Ada was closely involved in the creation and furtherance of the Analytical Engine, she herself is also known for many of her own inventions.
Ada began her journey as an inventor as young as 12 years old, and it is in this sphere that we can see her father’s imagination coming out in her. At this age Ada first began to dream about what she termed “a flying machine, and proceeded to go about designing it, methodically [and] thoughtfully” (Toole, article 5). She began the creation of this device in February 1828 by constructing wings. In the process of creating the flying machine Ada investigated many different angles, such as whether the material used should be: paper, oilsilk, wires, or feathers, with her final step being to include steam. She wrote a book entitled Flyology, and her “ideas predate Henson’s 1842 design for an Aerial Steam Carriage” (Toole, article 5).“The machines taking over the world were not to her the dull, dehumanizing materializations of the mathematical mindset. They were the inventions of creative minds, artifacts of the same ‘unseen world’ where the poets had discovered their Corsairs and their deep romantic chasms” (Woolley 147-48).
In a letter to Babbage dated February 16, 1840, Ada first reveals her thought on her most noted accomplishment as an inventor, that being the first steps towards what we term today computer programming.
“Ada was interested in the process of scientific discovery as she was in the result of the discovery. To Lady Byron [(one of her strongest critics)] and to many people, science meant and still means “the facts,” or digital, quantitative skills and analysis, based on observation and experimentation. Yet to Ada science meant much more, for it involved the integration of digital skills with what today we refer to as analog skills such as imagination and metaphor” (Toole, book 92).
Another scientist with the last name of Boole is the inventor that comes into question when discussing who was the first with the idea, but he did not publish his work, the Mathematical Analysis, until 1847. In Ada’s letter to Babbage she asked “whether the board game Solitaire could be written out mathematically. She stated with the process of numbering each peg and describing clearly each move… the methods Ada used were the first steps along [the] path” towards computer programming (Toole, book 5). It is due to the recognition deserved for this invention that the U.S. Department of Defense, in 1979, named a new software language “Ada,” and the “a clearinghouse for information and resources related to women and computing founded at Yale University” was named the “Ada Project” (Y Al-ammar, 5). Among Lovelace’s other inventions were the: concept of looping in computers, “describing the Analytical Engine’s functions in terms of memory,” and introduced the idea of constructing functions. After Ada wrote the “Notes” she had an argument with Babbage who no longer desired her assistance, this caused Ada to seek out other avenues of invention. Used time to understand physiology. (Y Al-ammar, 4). Approached Michael Faraday to guide her, but he was too ill so he turned her towards Andrew Crosse, another outrageous scientist. Crosse did further Ada’s education and later Ada had a part in a scientific article that Crosse had published.
Today women all over the world use both computers and computer programming. Some women even have the term “computer programmer” as their title for their job. Computers and their programs are used in the workplace, schools, and their programs, such as Solitaire, is used for entertainment. There is no question whether or not Ada Lovelace and her inventions are used by women because they are used my most of the world in some form or another.
