Ada Lovelace is not a name, that most people in the streets would be aware of. However, part of the reason for that was to grow under the shadows of a famous father – the poet Lord Byron, but once you know her story, you would realize that Ada Lovelace, was much more than just somebody who was born with a silver spoon in the mouth.
The above lines written by Lord Byron (one of the greatest poets in British history), does describe Ada Lovelace’s life to a great extent. As the only child of the famous poet Lord George Gordon Byron and his wife – Lady Anne Isabella Noel Byron (who was herself highly educated and extremely intelligent), she was a classic case of being “born with a silver spoon”. Her parents had money, fame & everything a person would wish for, except a stable and happy family background.
The problems had started soon after the birth of Augusta Ada Byron on 10th December 1815. Her parents separated when she was just 5 weeks old when Lady Byron left the house, with her young daughter. The official formalities of separation were completed a couple of months later. The couple never had a very good marital relationship & Lord Byron’s alleged affairs were said to play a prominent role in the development of this misunderstanding. Ada would never really get to see her father, as he left Britain soon after, and died in Greece when she was just 8 years old.
Besides being separated from her father, Ada did have to face many other problems, early on in her life. Her mother ignored her (perhaps it was because she reminded her of her husband, with whom she never had very good terms) and she spent a lot of her time, with her maternal grandfather. Her health was again never her strong point & she was quite often sick, suffering from a variety of ailments.
However, despite her ill health, she demonstrated a love for education, especially mathematics and technology. The study of mathematics, science, and logic was actively promoted by her mother (with help of private tutors) so that she didn’t pick up her father’s (Lord Byron’s) perceived undesirable qualities. Her mother herself loved mathematics and was very strict with her. There are even reports of her mother forcing her to lie still, (to increase her self-control) and forcing her to stay in isolation (when she reportedly was not sincere), which she believed would give her daughter a strong disciplined character, unlike her father.
It was on 8th July 1835 that Ada Byron married William King Noel, who became Earl of Lovelace in 1838. This made Ada the Countess of Lovelace. The couple had 3 children – Byron (born on 1836), Anna Isabella (born on 1837) & Ralph Gordon (born on 1839); however, even after the birth of children, her husband stayed quite supportive of Ada Lovelace’s academic and scientific pursuits. The couple socialized with the high and mighty of the time, with Michael Faraday & Charles Dickens being a close acquaintance.
However, her health never did totally recover and she continued to struggle with Asthma and problems of the digestive system even in adulthood. Painkillers of the time advised to her, had psychotropic effects on her, and her personality reportedly did undergo some changes.
Charles Babbage was a famous English mathematician and inventor of the 19th century, who at the time was a professor of at the University of Cambridge. He is credited for coming up with the idea of digital programmable computer & devising the first mechanical computer. The difference engine designed by him for performing mathematical calculations, was quite ahead of its time, for doing complicated calculations that relied on a large number of tables, which were prone to error.
Charles Babbage’s next planned device was “analytical engine”, which would help in much more complicated calculations. It would become the world’s first programmable computer, as it had all the essential elements of a modern computer. Unfortunately, it was never built. This does in no way undermine his accomplishments & so he is also considered by many as the father of the computer.
Ada first met Charles Babbage when she was around 17 years old (5th June 1833). The mathematician and inventor had a profound influence on her as she was fascinated by his ideas. On his part, Charles Babbage also realized that Lady Byron and young Ada were quite intelligent & had a good knowledge of mathematics, traits that were not common in women of the time.
Charles Babbage became a friend and mentor to Ava and Ada on her part soon began to take interest in his work. Ada Lovelace’s friendship with Mary Somerville, who was one of the finest mathematicians of the time also helped in the sharpening of her skills.
One of the first incidences, which brought her genius into the light was when she was asked to translate an article on Babbage’s analytical engine, written by the engineer (and future Italian Prime Minister), Luigi Fredrico Menabrea. As she translated the French text to English, she added her own thoughts on the subject and ideas revolving around the revolutionary machine. As a result, her notes became 3 x longer than the original article. These were published in 1843 in a science journal, with only her initials A.A.L.
In her notes, she also described in theory, the looping procedure that computer program uses in the modern world, where an engine repeats a series of instructions. She also described the possibility of creation of codes (for the device) that would enable the device to manage symbols and letters, in addition to numbers. This was a result of her direct understanding of the fact that music, alphabets & even images can be converted into numbers, which could then be manipulated by computer algorithms, thus taking the use of computers to a much higher level than what was envisioned by Charles Babbage.
She described how the machine could be used to calculate Bernoulli number, which is considered by many as the first algorithm to be carried out by a machine, and hence the first computer program. Writing the first machine algorithm of the world, for a computing machine, that still existed only on paper was what made Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer in the world.
The way things were going, it appeared that the first programmer of the computer, along with her friend and mentor Charles Babbage, would change the world forever. But it was not to be. Ada Lovelace’s health deteriorated soon after the translation got completed. Sudden financial difficulties of Charles Babbage, saw to that he was never able to finally build his analytical engine. It would take another century before Alan Turing arrived in the scene, who inspired by Ada Lovelace’s notes (the Menabrea translation), took Babbage’s analytical engine to its fruitful conclusion.
Ada Lovelace died very young at the age of only 36 years, from uterine cancer on 27th November 1852. Charles Dickens who had met Ada, in the 1830s through Babbage; was at her bedside at her last moments and read her a passage from his novel – ‘Dombey and Son’. After her death, she was buried beside her father’s grave (as per her last request) at the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
Ada Lovelace was quite a remarkable woman for her time. In the modern world, she not just has a computer programming language “Ada” named after her but the 2nd Tuesday of October every year is celebrated as Ada Lovelace day. Ada Lovelace day is celebrated internationally for achievements of women in different fields like – science, maths, technology, and engineering.
Unfortunately, in her own lifetime, she never got the fame that she deserved. It was only after her notes were republished in 1953, by BV Bowden in his book “Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machine”, that her role as the first computer programmer, became widely well known. The recognition which she deserved but never received in her own life came in the modern world as multiple posthumous honors.