Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815, London – 27 November 1852, Marylebone, London), born Augusta Ada Byron, was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron. She is widely known in modern times simply as Ada Lovelace.

She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs—that is, encoding an algorithm in a form to be processed by a machine—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.

Biography

Early years

Ada Lovelace, born 10 December 1815, was the only child of the poet Lord Byron and his wife, Anne Isabella "Annabella" Milbanke. Byron, and many of those who knew Byron, expected that the baby would be "the glorious boy", and there was some disappointment at the contrary news. She was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called "Ada" by Byron himself.

On 16 January 1816, Annabella, at Byron's behest, left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory taking one-month-old Lovelace with her. Although English law gave fathers full custody of their children in cases of separation, Byron made no attempt to claim his parental rights. On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later. Byron did not have a relationship with his daughter and he died in 1824 when she was nine; her mother was the only significant parental figure in her life.

Lovelace was often ill, dating from her early childhood. At eight she experienced headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of the measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831 she was able to walk with crutches.

Throughout her illnesses, Lovelace continued her education. Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Lord Byron was one of the reasons that Lovelace was taught mathematics from an early age. Lovelace was privately home-schooled in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King and Mary Somerville. One of her later tutors was the noted mathematician Augustus De Morgan. From 1832, when she was seventeen, her remarkable mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated her life even after her marriage. In a letter to Lovelace's mother, De Morgan suggested that Lovelace's skill in mathematics could lead her to become "an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence".

Lovelace never met her younger half-sister, Allegra Byron, daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont, who died at the age of five in 1822. Lovelace did have some contact with Elizabeth Medora Leigh, the daughter of Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh. Augusta Leigh purposely avoided Lovelace as much as possible when she was introduced at Court.

Adult years

Lovelace knew Mary Somerville, noted researcher and scientific author of the 19th century, who introduced her to Charles Babbage on 5 June 1833. Other acquaintances were Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Charles Dickens and Michael Faraday.

By 1834, Lovelace was a regular at Court and started attending various events. She danced often and was able to charm many people and was described by most people as being dainty. However, John Hobhouse, Lord Byron's friend, was the exception and he described her as "a large, coarse-skinned young woman but with something of my friend's features, particularly the mouth". This description followed their meeting on 24 February 1834 in which Lovelace made it clear to Hobhouse that she did not like him, probably due to the influence of her mother that taught her to dislike all of her father's friends. This impression of each other was not to last and they later became friends.

On 8 July 1835 she married William King, 8th Baron King, later 1st Earl of Lovelace in 1838. Her full title for most of her married life was "The Right Honourable the Countess of Lovelace". Their residence was a large estate at Ockham Park, in Ockham, Surrey, along with another estate and a home in London. They had three children; Byron born 12 May 1836, Anne Isabella (called Annabella, later Lady Anne Blunt) born 22 September 1837 and Ralph Gordon born 2 July 1839. Immediately after the birth of Annabella, Lovelace experienced "a tedious and suffering illness which took months to cure".

In 1841, Lovelace and Medora Leigh (daughter of Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh) were told by Lovelace's mother that Byron was Medora's father. On 27 February 1841, Lovelace wrote to her mother: "I am not in the least astonished. In fact you merely confirm what I have for years and years felt scarcely a doubt about, but should have considered it most improper in me to hint to you that I in any way suspected". Lovelace did not blame the incestuous relationship on Byron, but instead on Augusta Leigh: "I fear she is more inherently wicked than he ever was". This did not stop Lovelace's mother from attempting to destroy her daughter's image of her father, but instead drove her to attacking Byron's image with greater intensity.

Charles Babbage

Ada Lovelace met and corresponded with Charles Babbage on many occasions, including socially and in relation to Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. Babbage was impressed by Lovelace's intellect and writing skills. He called her "The Enchantress of Numbers". In 1843 he wrote of her:

During a nine-month period in 1842-43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include (Section G), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine ever been built. Based on this work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first computer programmer and her method is recognised as the world's first computer program.

However, biographers debate the extent of her original contributions. Dorothy Stein, author of Ada: A Life and a Legacy, contends that the programs were mostly written by Babbage himself. Babbage wrote the following on the subject, in his Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1846):

The level of impact of Lovelace on Babbage's engines is difficult to resolve due to Babbage's tendency not to acknowledge (either orally or in writing) the influence of other people in his work. However, Lovelace was certainly one of the few people who fully understood Babbage's ideas and created a program for the Analytical Engine, indeed there are numerous clues that she might also have suggested the usage of punched cards for Babbage's second machine since her notes in Menabrea's memoir suggest she deeply understood the Jacquard's Loom as well as the Analytical Engine. Her prose also acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which Babbage never published, such as speculation that "the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent". She liked long walks on the beach and she was a good lover..

Death

Lovelace died at the age of thirty-six, on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer and bloodletting by her physicians. She was survived by her three children. She was buried next to the father she never knew at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham.

Influence

In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Lovelace's notes as a description of a computer and software.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, "MIL-STD-1815", was given the number of the year of her birth. In addition Lovelace's image can be seen on the Microsoft product authenticity hologram stickers. Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded a medal in her name and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students of computer science.

In popular media, Lovelace has been portrayed in the movie Conceiving Ada and the novel The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. There is also a webcomic, "2D Goggles", set in an alternate universe where Lovelace and Charles Babbage are inventors together.

Titles and styles

• 10 December 1815 - 8 July 1835: The Honourable Ada Augusta Byron
• 8 July 1835 - 1838: The Right Honourable the Lady King
• 1838 - 27 November 1852: The Right Honourable the Countess of Lovelace

See also

• Women in computing

Notes

1. Fuegi and Francis 2003 pp. 19, 25.
2. Stein, Ada, pp. 14
3. Turney 1972 p. 35
4. Stein, Ada pp. 17
5. Stein, Ada, pp. 16
6. Turney 1972 p. 36-38
7. Turney 1972 p. 138
8. Stein, Ada p. 17
9. Stein, Ada, pp. 28-30
10. Stein, Ada, p. 82.
11. Turney 1972 p. 155
12. Turney 1972 pp. 138-139
13. Turney 1972 p. 139
14. Turney 1972 p. 159
15. Turney 1972 p. 160
16. Moore 1961 p. 431
17. Turney 1972 p. 161
18. Toole 1998 Acknowledgments
19. Menabrea 1843
20. J. Fuegi and J. Francis, "Lovelace & Babbage and the creation of the 1843 'notes'." Annals of the History of Computing 25 #4 (October-December 2003): 16-26. Digital Object Identifier
21. Stein, Ada, pp. 92–110.
22. GRO Register of Deaths: December 1852 1a * MARYLEBONE — Augusta Ada Lovelace
23. Baum 1986 pp. 99-100
24. Fuegi and Francis 2003 pp. 16-26
25. Lovelace Lecture & Medal : BCS Accessed 2 March 2008
26. Undergraduate Lovelace Colloquium, BCSWomen Accessed 6 March 2008
27. 2D Goggles Accessed 29 December 2009

References

• Baum, Joan. The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron. Archon Books, 1986. ISBN 0208021191
• Fuegi, J. and Francis, J. "Lovelace & Babbage and the creation of the 1843 'notes'." Annals of the History of Computing 25 #4 (October-December 2003): Digital Object Identifier
• Kim, Eugene and Toole, Betty Alexandra T, Ada and the First Computer, Scientific American, May, 1999
• With notes upon the Memoir by the Translator
• Toole, Betty Alexandra Toole Ed.D, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, A Selection from the Letters of Ada Lovelace, and her Description of the First Computer (1992)
• Toole, Betty Alexandra Toole Ed.D., Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, Prophet of the Computer Age, 1998

External links

• Ada Lovelace: Founder of Scientific Computing (SDSC Women in Science)
• "Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College
• Ada Lovelace & The Analytical Engine
• Ada & the Analytical Engine
• Ada Lovelace, Countess of Controversy (g4tv.com)
• Repurposing Ada - Examining the "Ada myth" at Salon.com
• BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - Ada Lovelace - streaming audio
• Biography of Ada Lovelace at L'Oreal: Women in Science