Ada Lovelace, Math Witch and the World’s first Computer Programmer
Back in the 1800s there was a girl. A very smart girl. She was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron. And she would become the world’s first computer programmer… even if “computer programmer” was not a thing at the time, and even if we tend to forget about her today. Meet Augusta Ada Byron, also known as Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace, or simply: Ada Lovelace. You might ask yourself how is it that a lady in the middle of the 19th century managed to become a mathematician and a computer scientist before computers were a thing. Stay with me and you’ll see how.
Ada was the daughter of the brief marriage between Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. I’ll spare you the beef, but basically Anne separated Lord Byron shortly after Ada was born, he left for Greece and little Ada never met him. Anne also had a taste for mathematics, and Byron even called her his “Princess of Parallelograms” (and after they parted he referred to her as a “Mathematical Medea” — Medea was a sorceress in Greek mythology, which makes that pseudonym kind of badass if you ask me).
Lady Byron was intent on her daughter to be unlike her poetical (and quite controversial) father, so since a very young age she signed her up with a tutor to learn, among other things, mathematics and music. At age 12, little genius Ada decided she wanted to fly, so she wrote a book titled Flyology, with her research about flying and birds’ anatomy, illustrations, and the equipment she would need — she even built a prototype for a pair of wings and had the plan of integrating steam with the “art of flying”, as she called it.
At the time, there were no “professional scientists” as we know them today (in fact, the term “scientist” was coined by W. Whewell in 1836), but there were plenty of noblemen and noblewomen doing their own research. Although women were not allowed to attend University or private clubs where much of the scientific research and discussion was done, they were allowed to attend public lectures, which Ada attended often.
Enter Charles Babbage, professor of mathematics at Cambridge, known as the inventor of the Difference Engine, a very elaborate calculating apparatus, and “the father of computers”. Mary Somerville (noted researcher, mathematician and scientific author, whom I hope to write about in the future), Ada’s tutor, introduced Ada and Babbage in 1833 at a party where Babbage gave her a demonstration of a small working section of his Engine. This was the beginning of their friendship and professional relationship — Babbage was so impressed by Ada that he would call her “The Enchantress of Numbers” (see? The Byrons were a family of Math Witches). Babbage had made plans for a new machine, the Analytical Engine, and that’s where their collaboration began.
So, what are these engines I speak of? At the time, these “engines” were some sort of giant, mechanical calculators. The Difference Engine was a machine designed to perform mathematical computations and storing numbers, and yet it could only apply finite differences. The new Analytical Engine was thought to be a machine that could compute with general information after being programmed — meaning, to act on general instructions (supplied through operation cards), without the need of a human programmer to set the initial values to enter data. The Analytical Engine was never built because it was too expensive. Now, I’m oversimplifying what the machine was able to do because it was a very complex piece of equipment. So complex, in fact, that Babbage always had trouble to fully explain what it could do. And that’s where Ada comes in.
In 1840, Babbage was invited to give a seminar in Italy about his Analytical Engine, where his lecture was transcribed and published in French (in 1842). Ada was commissioned with the translation of the paper into English — but she went well beyond that. She augmented the paper with notes that were about three times longer than the original publication and included the description of the Engine, a set of instructions, and her own speculations of its possible uses. These notes were later published in Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL, and it was not until 1953 when her notes were republished. More importantly, she became a vocal advocate of Babbage’s ideas, at a time where society didn’t really pay attention to his research.
So, why is Ada’s work so significant? Why are these notes so important? First of all, she was able to do something Babbage found very difficult to do for himself: actually explain what the machine did and how it differed from the previous Difference Engine. In note G, she gives what is considered the first program in history to be implemented on a computer, using an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. Ada went even further than that and speculated how the Analytical Engine would be capable of giving not only numerical results, but also symbolic, and how it was able to store both data and a sequence of instructions or, as we would call it today, a program. This was a huge conceptual leap: a machine that could solve problems of any complexity and do other things beyond calculating! She understood the potentials of a computing machine at a time where these were seen as merely calculating tools (a vision held by Babbage himself). She envisioned computers being used to compose complex music, produce graphics, and being useful not only for scientific purposes but for practical purposes as well. Sounds familiar? Well, that’s what modern computers do.
Ada hoped to be an “analyst and metaphysician” and she often talked about “poetical science”. This very particular point of view is what helped her conceive computers and their functions with imagination, in a human context. She valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring “the unseen worlds around us” and applying imagination to science.
Isaacson sums up Ada Lovelace’s contributions into four essential concepts that would be the foundations of modern computers: 1) the idea of a general-purpose machine, able of reprogramming and an unlimited range of operations; 2) the idea that such a machine could go beyond mathematical calculations, capable of processing any piece of content, data or information and express them in digital form — this was the conceptual leap we were talking about above; 3) the step-by-step outline of “the workings of what we now call a computer program or algorithm”; and 4) to question whether machines could think independently, to which she concluded that no matter how powerful a computer could be, it would never be a “thinking machine” (over a hundred years later we haven’t proved her wrong — yet?).
As you can see. Ada’s contributions are huge. Alan Turing, known as the “father of modern computers”, was inspired by Lovelace and implemented symbols to the Colossus and made explicit references to her Notes in his works. Throughout her life, she was very interested in science and discoveries of the era, and she even had plans to create a mathematical model for how the brain’s thinking process works.
Unfortunately she died at the age of 37 of uterine cancer (and after a long history of illnesses that didn’t stop her research) and we are now deprived of her research. Some refer to her as the “prophet of the computer age” — and I happen to think this is very fitting.
This is the fourth on a series of articles about Women in History. Check out my profile or my blog for my previous articles on Cipe Pineles, Joan Clarke and Sor Juana!
