Ada Lovelace — Portrait by Margaret Carpenter, 1836.
Born: December 10, 1815, Piccadilly Terrace, Middlesex, UK
Died: November 27, 1852, Marylebone, London, UK
Ada Lovelace was born as Augusta Ada Byron, the daughter of Lord Byron, the poet, and his then wife, Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke Byron. Their marriage was not a happy one, mostly due to Lord Byron’s serial infidelities. It seems that when his daughter Ada was born, he was hoping for a boy and was disappointed with a girl. Ada was his only legitimate child. Her name, Ada, was given to her by her father Lord Byron.
A month after Ada’s birth, Lady Byron and Lord Byron separated, later signing a deed of separation. After the signing, Byron left England for good, dying in Greece when Ada was eight. Ada never met her father but must have become somewhat infatuated with him as in later life she left instructions to be buried beside him on her death.
During her childhood Ada had a distant relationship with her mother and was raised mostly by her maternal grandmother, Judith, Hon. Lady Milbanke, who seems to have been very fond of her. It was her mother who insisted that she be taught science, mathematics, and logic, to prevent her from developing the insanity of her husband. She was educated by several private tutors hired by her mother, Lady Byron, including Mary Somerville the Scottish mathematician. She later self-educated herself. She was assisted in her mathematical studies by Augustus De Morgan, first professor of mathematics at The University of London.
During one of her frequent childhood illnesses she developed a fascination with flying. She studied materials suitable as wing coverings. She studied the flight of birds to determine the size of their wings as compared to the size of the bodies, and she wrote a book about her findings called Flyology.
At the age of seventeen, going on eighteen she had an affair with one of her tutors. They tried to elope but were discovered. Ada’s mother was summoned, and the affair was covered up by Lady Byron and her family.
She was presented at Court at the age of seventeen where she was popular, and by 1834 Ada was a regular at Court and started attending various events. She was an accomplished dancer, described by most people as being dainty.
On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King. They had three homes: one in Surrey; an estate in Scotland; and a house in London. They had three children: Byron (born 1836); Anne Isabella (called Annabella, born 1837); and Ralph Gordon (born 1839). Immediately after the birth of Annabella, Lady King experienced “a tedious and suffering illness, which took months to cure”. Today we would most likely diagnose her condition as post-partum depression. In 1838, her husband was made Earl of Lovelace and Viscount Ockham, meaning Ada became the Countess of Lovelace.
Ada had a relaxed approach to extra-marital relationships with men which caused much gossip. She was also an inveterate gambler and was rumored to have lost £3,000 betting on the horses at one time. It is, however, her work with Charles Babbage and his calculating machines for which she is best known.
She was introduced to Charles Babbage, known as the father of computers, by their mutual friend, Mary Somerville in 1833. Babbage introduced Ada to his Difference Engine, a mechanical calculator (computer), but she was much more interested in his plans for the Analytical Engine, capable of more general calculations. She studied and translated an article on the Analytical Engine by Luigi Federico Menabrea, an Italian mathematician and later the Italian Prime Minister, that providing detailed descriptions of its computational capabilities and instructions on how it could be programmed.
Babbage never completed building his computing engines, but Ada’s notes on how to program it anointed her as the first computer programmer. Only Babbage’s Difference Engine has been built, completed in London in 2002. While Ada’s place as the first programmer is supported by many, there’s a small coterie who claim the title for Babbage himself based on his design notes for his engines.
Babbage had a narrow view of the potential for his calculating engines whereas Ada had a deeper understanding of their potential. She saw how mere numbers could be used to represent other things such as letters or musical notes. She also saw in Babbage’s Analytical Engine a device that could go beyond mere number crunching to a device that could perform logical processes, changing it from a calculator to a computer.
In more modern times a computer programming language, ADA, was named after her. During my career in the defense industry in the UK, ADA was a mandatory programming language for some classes of military programs.
Ada died on 27 November 1852 from uterine cancer. She was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. She left a legacy of women in mathematics, particularly in the programming of computers and how they could be used beyond mere number crunching.