ADA LOVELACE, A PIONEER ENGLISH SCIENTIST & WRITER

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician, writer, and the first computer programmer, well-known by the Analytical Engine.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815-27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.

She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a computing machine and one of the first computer programmers.

Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Byron. All of Byron's other children were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever four months later. He commemorated the parting in a poem that begins, Is thy face like thy mother's my fair child! ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?.

He died of disease in the Greek War of Independence when Ada was eight years old. Her mother remained bitter and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Ada remained interested in Byron. Upon her eventual death, she was buried next to him at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.

Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as poetical science and herself as an Analyst & Metaphysician. When she was a teenager, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, who is known as the father of computers. She was in particular interested in Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. 

Lovelace first met him in June 1833, through their mutual friend, and her private tutor, Mary Somerville. Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea on the calculating engine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of notes, simply called Notes. These notes contain what many consider to be the first computer program -that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.

 

More information: Famous Scientists

Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from the years 1836/1837 contain the first programs for the engine. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Her mindset of poetical science led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine -as shown in her notes- examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool.

  

Lord Byron expected his child to be a glorious boy and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl. The child was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called Ada by Byron himself. On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron's command, Lady Byron left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory, taking their five-week-old daughter with her. Although English law at the time granted full custody of children to the father in cases of separation, Lord Byron made no attempt to claim his parental rights, but did request that his sister keep him informed of Ada's welfare.

Lovelace was often ill, beginning in early childhood. At the age of eight, she experienced headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralysed after a bout of measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, something which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831, she was able to walk with crutches. Despite the illnesses, she developed her mathematical and technological skills.

Lovelace became close friends with her tutor Mary Somerville, who introduced her to Charles Babbage in 1833. She had a strong respect and affection for Somerville, and they corresponded for many years. Other acquaintances included the scientists Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens. She was presented at Court at the age of seventeen and became a popular belle of the season in part because of her brilliant mind.

On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King. They had three children: Byron; Anne Isabella; and Ralph Gordon. Immediately after the birth of Annabella, Lady King experienced a tedious and suffering illness, which took months to cure. Ada was a descendant of the extinct Barons Lovelace and in 1838, her husband was made Earl of Lovelace and Viscount Ockham, meaning Ada became the Countess of Lovelace.

 

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Throughout her illnesses, she continued her education. Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Byron was one of the reasons that Ada was taught mathematics from an early age. She was privately schooled in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King, and Mary Somerville, the noted 19th-century researcher and scientific author. One of her later tutors was the mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan. From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life.

 

Lovelace believed that intuition and imagination were critical to effectively applying mathematical and scientific concepts. She valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring the unseen worlds around us.

Lovelace died at the age of 36 -the same age at which her father had died- on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer probably exacerbated by bloodletting by her physicians.

Throughout her life, Lovelace was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including phrenology and mesmerism.

After her work with Babbage, Lovelace continued to work on other projects. In 1844 she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings -a calculus of the nervous system.

Lovelace first met Charles Babbage in June 1833, through their mutual friend Mary Somerville.

 

In 1840, Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his Analytical Engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer and the future Prime Minister of Italy, transcribed Babbage's lecture into French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève in October 1842. Babbage's friend Charles Wheatstone commissioned Ada Lovelace to translate Menabrea's paper into English. She then augmented the paper with notes, which were added to the translation.

 

More information: History

 

Ada Lovelace spent the better part of a year doing this, assisted with input from Babbage. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published in the September 1843 edition of Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL.

Ada Lovelace's notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada Lovelace has often been cited as the first computer programmer for this reason. The engine was never completed so her program was never tested.

In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B.V. Bowden's Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines.  

The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a computer and software.

Doron Swade, a specialist on history of computing known for his work on Babbage, analysed four claims about Lovelace during a lecture on Babbage's analytical engine:

-She was a mathematical genius.

-She made an influential contribution to the analytical engine.

-She was the first computer programmer.

-She was a prophet of the computer age.

More information: Gradiant

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions

whatever to originate anything.

It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform...

But it is likely to exert an indirect

and reciprocal influence on science itself.

Ada Lovelace