UNPRECEDENTED ACHIEVEMENTS
Ada Lovelace, the Countess of Loveless, was an English mathematician and writer primarily known for being regarded as the first computer programmer. Her work on the general-purpose mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine, became groundbreaking when she discovered that the machine had applications beyond calculation.
“I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of hidden realities of nature.”
– Ada Lovelace
A Gloomy Start
Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815, in England, and was the daughter of the famous poet Lord George Byron and his wife Lady Anne Byron. She was named after her half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called “Ada” for short. While she could perhaps thank her father for her inherited creativity, Ada did not have a relationship with the poet, as he died when she was eight years old.
Ada Lovelace had a troubled childhood as a young woman in Victorian society. Despite her mother being her only parental figure, she did not have a close relationship with Ada and often left her in the care of her maternal grandmother. Ada was also prone to getting ill and suffered headaches that obscured her vision since she was eight. In June of 1829, she became paralyzed after contracting measles and was subjected to bedrest for nearly a year. By 1831, she was able to walk on crutches and upon her extended bedrest, was able to develop her mathematical and technological skills.
In 1832, when Ada was 17 years old, her mathematical skills began to emerge, and was the start of her adult life in the field. It was then she met Charles Babbage at a town party, who fascinated her with his Difference Engine, what we know today as an early version of the calculator. Upon this interaction, her life changed forever.
The Creative Opportunist
Ada enjoyed opportunities that were not usually given to young, aristocratic women of this period. After meeting Charles Babbage, Ada was invited to see a small-scale version of his calculating machine, the Difference Engine. Charles was a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a position that was once held by Isaac Newton. Charles had become fed up with people making mistakes in lengthy calculations, so his idea was to build a hand-cranked calculator. Ada was completely captivated by this concept.
Even though there was little she could do to help Charles in his work, she requested copies of the blueprints of Charles’s machine, determined to understand its inner workings. Charles Babbage soon became her mentor. In the following years, Ada continued her mathematical pursuits and was introduced to some of the greatest mathematicians of her time. She became friends with Mary Somerville, who discussed modern mathematics with her and talked in detail about Charles’s Difference Engine.
At the age of 19, in the year 1835, Ada married William King, the Earl of Lovelace, with whom she had three children. While developing a family, she took some time away from math but picked it back up in 1841. She took on some advanced work for the University College London and also continued to learn advanced mathematics with Mary.
The Analytical Engine
By 1842, Charles Babbage had moved on from the Difference Engine and began working on a more advanced project, the Analytical Engine, a much higher-level computer concept.
This year, Ada discovered a paper written by a french engineer called A Sketch of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was compiled from Charles’s lectures regarding his new concept. When she translated the paper into English, Charles Babbage asked her why she had not written such a paper herself, because she was more than capable.
She responded by adding her own notes to the paper, which was three times more extensive. She added algebraic workings and corrected some of Charles’s errors. In this paper, she includes the world’s first published computer program, the Bernoulli number algorithm, and is Ada’s most groundbreaking work.
The Modern Mathmetician
Due to her inspirational work on the Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace became the first known computer programmer. In her work, she identified new concepts and realized that the Analytical Engine could go beyond just numbers. Ada found that anything could be converted into numbers, such as music, language, or images that could then be manipulated by computer algorithms. This was the first ever perception of the modern computer. She was described as “an enchantress of numbers.”
Unfortunately, Ada’s contributions to the world of mathematics and computer science were cut short, for she got very ill and died young. While her findings were a small, yet significant part of the Analytical Engine, Ada’s work will be well remembered. The second Tuesday of October has been named Ada Lovelace Day, which honors the contributions of women to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics all over the world.