Ada Lovelace
1815 – 1852
Ada Lovelace
Mathematician
First Computer Programmer
Analytical Engine
Portrait of Augusta Ada Byron, also known as Ada Lovelace, considered by many as the world's first computer programmer.
Brilliant, Fiercely Imaginative, and DifficultAugusta Ada Byron, remembered today as Ada Lovelace, was born on December 10th, 1815, to Lord George and Lady Annabella Byron (née Millbank) of London, England. Her father was a renowned romantic poet and aristocrat, and her mother was an educational reformer, whom Lord Byron called “the Princess of Parallelograms” because of her mathematical affinity. They separated when Lovelace was just five weeks old. She never again saw her father and was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother.
Lovelace had rigorous lessons in a wide range of subjects, including geography, music, Italian, French, and mathematics. Her mother encouraged active learning over rote memorization and was heavily involved in her daughter’s homeschooling, along with various friends and a governess. Though biographers point to the dual influences of her parents as enabling her to imaginatively bridge the poetic and abstract with the logical, her lack of contact with her father meant his direct influence was unlikely. Recent work has shown that Lady Annabella herself was a lifelong poet, likely ensuring a well-rounded education for her daughter that helped Lovelace bloom and develop an intense curiosity.
Lovelace was deeply interested in mathematics from a young age. Before reaching teenagehood, she had worked through sophisticated algebraic equations and dived into Euclidean geometry. At age 12, while her mother was in Devon, England recovering from bronchitis, Lovelace developed Flyology, a study which included a flying machine that she imagined so that her mother’s letters would arrive more quickly. Her design was a:
Envisioned by a young Lovelace, the concept of Flyology proposed a horse-like creature powered by a steam engine and equipped with wings, designed to deliver letters with better efficiency.
Lovelace’s own short life was full of illness, including severe headaches from age 8 and paralysis from measles at age 14. By 1831, at 16, she was walking with crutches. The following year, she had an affair with a tutor, covered up by her mother’s circle. After this, Lovelace was presented at court, and was much sought after for her intellect, attending regularly and in good company with the likes of Michael Faraday, Florence Nightingale, and Charles Dickens.
Tantalizing… Fairies and SpritesIn 1835, Lovelace married William King, who became Earl of Lovelace in 1838, providing Lovelace with the surname by which she is known today. Between getting married, having three children, and struggling with bouts of serious illness, Lovelace began to focus on mathematics in earnest.
The catalyst for this was her introduction to Charles Babbage and the prototype of his Difference Engine. Essentially an advanced calculator for the time, the Engine was designed to repeatedly apply a single operation to inputted data to reach a solution. Babbage often presented it to guests at exclusive parties, and upon attending one such event, 17-year-old Lovelace was instantly captivated by the workings of this machine. Lady Annabella’s friend, Sophia De Morgan, noted that,
This meeting was pivotal for Lovelace as Babbage became a mentor, with Lovelace devoting much of her time to studying his Difference Engine.
Lovelace could not, as a woman, advance her education through university. However, she would not be deterred from furthering her pursuit of mathematics and continued to rely on friends and mentors to guide her. Evidence of Lovelace’s mathematical development has been preserved through letters, as much of her tutelage happened through mail. One mentor was Mary Somerville, a renowned interdisciplinary scientist with whom Lovelace often corresponded about problems encountered while working on algebra and geometry. In 1840, she started tutoring under Augustus De Morgan, a respected mathematician at University College London.
Despite societal constraints preventing Lovelace from formally attending college due to her gender, she managed to further her mathematical pursuit under the guidance of Augustus De Morgan at University College London, primarily through correspondence letters.
Lovelace pushed quickly past memorization to understand the theory behind her learnings. De Morgan’s correspondence helped Lovelace sharpen this skill. Much of his guidance was focused on helping her work through his textbook, Differential and Integral Calculus, which focused heavily on mathematical proofs. As Lovelace learned, she began to challenge her tutor. In one of her letters to De Morgan, Lovelace contested his assumption about the truth of the Principle of the Permanence of Equivalent Forms. This theory was widely accepted at the time and suggested that if mathematical principles apply to specific numbers, they must be true for all numbers. Lovelace found this theory to be “wanting of proof,” and while there is no evidence to suggest that she explored this any further, the theorem was disproved just a few years later. Lovelace’s questioning of De Morgan indicates her critical eye and sophisticated grasp of mathematics.
Lovelace’s studies were intermittent. By 1839, she had to meet the demands of her three young children and fell ill on multiple occasions. However, she was intensely committed and always returned to mathematics. Lovelace’s enthusiasm is clear in her writings, and she even found joy in the difficult bits, comparing algebraic symbols to,
While it is clear from her letters that she had gaps in her foundational math, undoubtedly stemming from her barrier to formal education, Lovelace’s wit and insight impressed those who worked with her. Babbage saw in Lovelace an,
The High-Priestess of Babbage’s EngineWhile Lovelace was developing her mathematical understanding, Babbage was exploring a more advanced machine than the one that had so enthralled Lovelace—the Analytical Engine. Similar to its predecessor in that it was also a computing device, the Analytical Engine boasted a more sophisticated design—so much so that some consider it the first computer because of its ability to store and process information. Unlike the Difference Engine, the Analytical Engine was imagined for general-purpose computations, theoretically able to solve any calculation it was given. Babbage shared his ideas and even some drawings with Lovelace to help her understand his device and began looking for supporters to fund its creation. In search of foreign investment, Babbage held talks in Turin, Italy, attended by Luigi Menabrea, an engineer and the eventual Prime Minister of Italy, who later published a French article on the Analytical Engine, entitled Notions sur la machine analytique (in English: Notes on the analytical engine).
The ground-breaking nature of the Difference Engine, an innovative mathematical computing device, played a pivotal role in inspiring Ada Lovelace's profound exploration and study of machinery. This influence extended beyond the Difference Engine, encompassing her visionary insights into the potential of the Analytical Engine, a more comprehensive computing concept, and contributing to her significant contributions in the burgeoning field of computer science.
Lovelace and others saw potential in Menabrea’s paper to generate enthusiasm and funding for the Analytical Engine in England. Lovelace agreed to translate it into English, adding footnotes and annotations to correct errors in the paper and presenting her own insights on its workings. Over the course of a year, she worked with Babbage to proofread and discuss her writings. In a fashion that seems typical of Lovelace, her exploration went far beyond the technical workings of the design and into the potential she saw in its capabilities. Ultimately, her published Notes were 66 pages — three times longer than Menabrea’s original article. It is these Notes for which she is most remembered. The now famous appendix, Note G, systematically outlines how the machine could be used to compute a complicated series known as Bernoulli numbers. If the Analytical Engine could be considered the first computer, Note G might be a scheme for the first computer program.
Lovelace’s insights into the Engine’s capabilities were profound and framed its potential to work much like a modern computer. While Babbage had designed the machine to perform complex calculations, Lovelace suggested that it had the potential to do far more: that it could process and manipulate any symbols represented through mathematical expressions, such as music. On this, she wrote,
This is an exceptionally keen observation and is what separated Lovelace from other mathematicians, and even from Charles Babbage himself. Her imagination and deep understanding of the field of mathematics allowed Lovelace to see “the unseen relations between things,” and thus expand Babbage’s significant idea beyond the reaches of the creator’s original concept. It is fitting, therefore, that, in a letter to her mother, she referred to herself as,
In the final years of Lovelace’s life, she drew controversy surrounding a gambling habit and an extramarital affair. It has been supposed that her gambling was in hopes of raising money to fund the creation of the Analytical Engine, but it ended up leaving her husband with serious debts to repay. Lovelace died in 1852, at age 36, from what was most likely uterine cancer.
Visionary of Computational PossibilitiesIn Lovelace’s lifetime, being a woman was certainly a hindrance to one’s education and consequently made it almost impossible to gain recognition in the scientific community. However, Lovelace had many of life’s privileges: she came from a wealthy aristocratic family, she was educated (though not in the same way a man of her status would have been), and her network of connections created the opportunity to ask some of the foremost mathematicians to tutor her. Still, gaining their respect was a challenge and none of the Notes she authored were well-regarded during or immediately following her life, as even Babbage doesn’t seem to have drawn attention to them publicly.
A century later, another brilliant mind reflected on these Notes, when Alan Turing included a section titled Lady Lovelace’s Objection in his 1950 piece “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” In this paper, Turing takes direct inspiration from Lovelace’s ideas in the first discussion and argument for artificial intelligence. From this, a new awareness of Lovelace’s work grew, but even this is tainted.
Debates ensue over whether she was the first computer programmer or merely a debugger of Babbage’s ideas, and even whether Lovelace had the mathematical capability or the mental stability to do the work attributed to her. Some have made it clear that she wrote Notes and understood the possibilities of the Analytical Engine “despite” her mathematical skills being somewhat lacking. But, perhaps, it is not the mathematics for which Lovelace should be remembered. Rather, her prescience, the incredible foreknowledge that a machine such as the Analytical Engine could be so much more than a calculator, should remain at the core of what holds our interest.
Today, Lovelace’s contributions are recognized in many ways. For example, in 2009 activist Sue Charman-Anderson founded Ada Lovelace Day in October in the United Kingdom, as a symbol for the importance of women in STEM.
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Website Name: The Matilda Project
Title of Entry: Ada Lovelace
Authors: Kimberley Martin & Kurhula Mbetse
Illustrator: Michie Wu
Editors: Sandy Marshall & Shehroze Saharan
Original Publication Date: February 16, 2024
Last Updated: March 31, 2024
Copyright: CC BY-NC-ND
Webpage Specific Tags: Ada Lovelace; First computer programmer; Analytical Engine; Charles Babbage; Lovelace's algorithm; 19th-century mathematician; Women in computing history; Algorithmic instructions; Computational creativity; Mathematics and poetry; Countess of Lovelace; Early computer science pioneer; Lovelace-Babbage correspondence; Programming languages inspiration; STEM women pioneers; Mathematical logic; Data manipulation; Mechanical computing; Visionary of computer age; Contribution to computer theory; Legacy in technology and science; Women in STEM history; Ada Lovelace Day celebration; Pioneer in technology.
Website Tags: The Matilda Project, The Matilda Effect; Margaret W. Rossiter; Matilda Joslyn Gage; Implicit bias; Unconscious bias; Gender attribution bias; Scientific recognition bias; Gender discrimination in academia; Stereotype threat; Pay gap in STEM; Glass ceiling in science; Sexism in scientific research; Gender stereotypes in education; Gender bias in peer review; Bias in STEM hiring practices; Impact of gender bias on scientific innovation; Underrecognition of female scientists; History of women in science; Women scientists in history; Notable women in science; Pioneering women scientists; Women Nobel laureates; Female role models in science; Gender disparities in scientific research; Women's suffrage movement; Historical women's rights leaders; Historian of science; STEM gender gap; Women in STEM; STEM education; Challenges faced by women in STEM; Representation of women in tech; Initiatives to support women in STEM; Gender equity in STEM education; Encouraging girls in STEM; STEM outreach programs; Diversity in STEM curriculum; Equity, Diversity, Inclusion; Equity in education and workplace; Diversity training; Inclusion strategies; Inclusive leadership; Gender equality; Racial equity; Pay equity and transparency; Representation in media.
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APA Citation
Martin, K., & Mbetse, M. (2024, March 31). Ada Lovelace. The Matilda Project. https://www.thematildaproject.com/scientists/ada-lovelace
Authors
Dr. Kimberley Martin
Assistant Professor - History and Culture & Technology Studies at the University of Guelph
Associate Director - The Humanities Interdisciplinary Collaboration (THINC) Lab at the University of Guelph
Dr. Kimberley Martin is an assistant professor of History and of Culture and Technology Studies at the University of Guelph, where she also co-directs the THINC Lab. Her research interests include humanities researchers’ experiences of serendipity, user experiences of linked data interfaces, and oral and digital history.
Kurhula Mbetse
Undergraduate Student - Culture & Technology Studies at the University of Guelph
Kurhula Mbetse is an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph, majoring in Culture and Technology Studies. Her developing academic interests lie in examining power systems, digital rights, and alternative futures.
Illustrator
