This article was originally published on November 3, 2022.
Ada Byron was on her best behavior when she was introduced to the British royal court for the first time – although she found the event and its attendees unimpressive. A few weeks later, however, the 17-year-old girl accompanied her mother to a maths lecture. Che an event captured her imagination and changed her life.
Within the next decade she married and became Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. But historians remember her as Ada Lovelace, a pioneer in computer science whose contributions in the early 1840s provided mathematicians and inventors with the foundation needed to advance computer technology.
As a woman, Lovelace was deprived of formal training and relied on teachers and mentors to develop her skills. Her legacy has also been subject to misogyny, with some historians disputing her abilities and arguing that Lovelace did not possess the mathematical prowess she claimed. In recent years, however new insight from her writings found that Lovelace truly deserves its place in history.
From the supercomputer to the world’s first computer programmer
The lecture that inspired Lovelace was given by mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. He had invented A difference engine, a type of calculator designed to take a specific formula and calculate successive values. Babbage was also working on the Analytical Engine, which he hoped would be a general-purpose calculator that could change the type of formulas it calculated.
To Lovelace, the thought that mathematicians could design a machine that processed numbers on demand was mind-blowing. She subsequently began a friendship and correspondence with Babbage that lasted almost two decades.
In 1843 Lovelace published an article from her own to Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Her work translates another scholar’s paper from French into English, although she adds appendices that are twice the length of the original work. These applications consisted of a table of mathematical notations and were intended to show how a computer could function.
Tables served as a building block for mathematicians and inventors who later turned the idea of a paper computer into reality. However, others argued that she was not their true author and that she did not deserve credit at all.
Questionable math
These detractors claimed that Lovelace was simply Babbage’s student and that her relationship with him was more of a mentor and student than a meeting of the minds. Criticism has led some to claim that Lovelace was simply regurgitating parts of Babbage’s earlier works.
Others have used her exclusion from academia against her. As a woman, Lovelace was forbidden to study at the graduate school; she followed a traditional method of mathematical research, which failed to include algebra as part of trigonometry. Lovelace, however, continued to study advanced algebra and calculus on his own terms and like many women in science, she forged her own path. Augustus De Morgan, a famous mathematician and logician, personally tutored her.
It seems that Lovelace’s social status meant that she knew all the right people, in all the right places. But for more than two centuries, one relationship in particular has almost overshadowed her legacy as a pioneer in computing.
Ada Lovelace: Daughter of the poet Lord Byron
Lovelace was born in December 1815 to the poet Lord George Gordon Bryan, the most famous poet in England at the time – and known just as well for his many affairs. One of the most scandalous rumors surrounding Lovelace’s father alleged incestuous affair with his older half-sister.
Lovelace’s parents separated within a month of her birth, a scandal that prompted her father to leave England for France. Lovelace never met Lord Byron; he died in 1824 of a fever at the age of 36. Her motherhowever, she was doing well without a husband.
Lady Annabella Bryan comes from a wealthy family whose patriarch was a Member of Parliament. Since Lady Byron did not want her daughter to grow up to be a poet like Lord Byron, the family used their resources to hire math and science teachers. Attending mathematics lectures and building lifelong friendships with scholars and scientists helped Lovelace gain valuable access to one-on-one instruction and mentorship in the field.
Her contribution to computing might have been even greater if she hadn’t suffering from uterine cancer for more than 18 months before she died aged 36 in November 1852. Her letters and writings have been preserved over the years and have led historians to wonder what else the world’s first computer programmer might have achieved had she lived longer .