Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an
English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical
general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications
beyond pure calculation.
Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella
Milbanke. All Lovelace's half-siblings, Lord Byron's other children, were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever.
He died in Greece when Ada was eight. Her mother was anxious about her upbringing and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Ada remained interested in him, naming her two sons Byron and Gordon. Upon her death, she was buried next to him at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.
Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst & Metaphysician".
When she was eighteen, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, who is known as "the father of computers".
She was in particular interested in Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Lovelace first met him on 5 June 1833, when she and her mother attended one of Charles Babbage's Saturday night soirées with their mutual friend, and Ada's private tutor, Mary Somerville.
Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article by the military engineer Luigi Menabrea about the Analytical Engine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of seven notes, simply called "Notes".
Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from 1837 to 1840 contain the first programs for the engine.
She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.
Her mindset of "poetical science" led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine (as shown in her notes), examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool. The coding language Ada is named for her.
Lord Byron expected his child to be a "glorious boy" and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave
birth to a girl. The child was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called "Ada" by Byron
himself. On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron's command, Lady Byron left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory,
taking their five-week-old daughter with her. Although English law at the time granted full custody of children to
the father in cases of separation, Lord Byron made no attempt to claim his parental rights, but did request that
his sister keep him informed of Ada's welfare.
On 21 April, Lord Byron signed the deed of separation, although very reluctantly, and left
England for good a few days later.
Aside from an acrimonious separation, Lady Byron continued throughout her life
to make allegations about her husband's immoral behaviour.
This set of events made Lovelace infamous in Victorian
society. Ada did not have a relationship with her father. He died in 1824 when she was eight years old. Her mother
was the only significant parental figure in her life. Lovelace was not shown the family portrait of her father
until her 20th birthday.
Lovelace did not have a close relationship with her mother. She was often left in the care of her maternal grandmother Judith, Hon. Lady Milbanke, who doted on her. However, because of societal attitudes of the time—which favoured the husband in any separation, with the welfare of any child acting as mitigation—Lady Byron had to present herself as a loving mother to the rest of society.
This included writing anxious letters to
Lady Milbanke about her daughter's welfare, with a cover note saying to retain the letters in case she had to use
them to show maternal concern. In one letter to Lady Milbanke, she referred to her daughter as "it": "I talk to it
for your satisfaction, not my own, and shall be very glad when you have it under your own."
Lady Byron had her
teenage daughter watched by close friends for any sign of moral deviation. Lovelace dubbed these observers the
"Furies" and later complained they exaggerated and invented stories about her.
Lovelace was often ill, beginning in early childhood. At the age of eight, she experienced headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, something which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831, she was able to walk with crutches.
Despite the illnesses, she developed her mathematical and technological skills.
When Ada was twelve years old, this future "Lady Fairy", as Charles Babbage affectionately called her, decided she wanted to fly. Ada Byron went about the project methodically, thoughtfully, with imagination and passion. Her first step, in February 1828, was to construct wings. She investigated different material and sizes. She considered various materials for the wings: paper, oilsilk, wires, and feathers.
She examined the anatomy of birds to determine the right proportion between the wings and the body. She decided to write a book, Flyology, illustrating, with plates, some of her findings.
She decided what equipment she would need; for example, a compass, to "cut across the country by the most direct road", so that she could surmount mountains, rivers, and valleys. Her final step was to integrate steam with the "art of flying".
Ada Byron had an affair with a tutor in early 1833.
She tried to elope with him after she was caught, but the tutor's relatives recognised her and contacted her mother. Lady Byron and her friends covered the incident up to prevent a public scandal.
Lovelace never met her younger half-sister, Allegra, the daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont.
Allegra died in 1822 at the age of five. Lovelace did have some contact with Elizabeth Medora Leigh, the daughter of Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh, who purposely avoided Lovelace as much as possible when introduced at court.
Lovelace became close friends with her tutor Mary Somerville, who introduced her to Charles Babbage in 1833. She had a strong respect and affection for Somerville, and they corresponded for many years. Other acquaintances included the scientists Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens. She was presented at Court at the age of seventeen "and became a popular belle of the season" in part because of her "brilliant mind". By 1834 Ada 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, although John Hobhouse, Byron's friend, 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 Ada made it clear to Hobhouse that she did not like him, probably due to her mother's influence,
which led her to dislike all of her father's friends.
On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King. They had three homes:
Ockham Park, Surrey; a Scottish estate on Loch Torridon in Ross-shire; and a house in London. They spent their
honeymoon at Ashley Combe near Porlock Weir, Somerset, which had been built as a hunting lodge in 1799 and was
improved by King in preparation for their honeymoon.
It later became their summer retreat and was further improved during this time. From 1845, the family's main house was Horsley Towers, built in the Tudorbethan fashion by the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Charles Barry, and later greatly enlarged to Lovelace's own designs.
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".
Ada was a descendant of the extinct Barons Lovelace and in 1838, her husband
was made Earl of Lovelace and Viscount Ockham, meaning Ada became the Countess of Lovelace. In 1843–44, Ada's
mother assigned William Benjamin Carpenter to teach Ada's children and to act as a "moral" instructor for Ada. He
quickly fell for her and encouraged her to express any frustrated affections, claiming that his marriage meant he
would never act in an "unbecoming" manner.
When it became clear that Carpenter was trying to start an affair, Ada
cut it off.
In 1841, Lovelace and Medora Leigh were told by Ada's mother that Ada's father was also Medora's father. On 27 February 1841, Ada 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."
She did not blame the incestuous relationship on Byron, but instead blamed Augusta Leigh: "I fear she is more inherently wicked than he ever was." In the 1840s, Ada flirted with scandals: firstly, from a relaxed approach to extra-marital relationships with men, leading to rumours of affairs; and secondly, from her love of gambling.
She apparently lost more than £3,000 on the horses during the later 1840s. The gambling led to her forming a syndicate with male friends, and an ambitious attempt in 1851 to create a mathematical model for successful large bets. This went disastrously wrong, leaving her thousands of pounds in debt to the syndicate, forcing her to admit it all to her husband. She had a shadowy relationship with Andrew Crosse's son John from 1844 onwards.
John Crosse destroyed most of their correspondence after her death as part of a legal agreement. She bequeathed him the only heirlooms her father had personally left to her. During her final illness, she would panic at the idea of the younger Crosse being kept from visiting her.
Throughout her life, Lovelace was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including phrenology and mesmerism.
Ada Lovelace spent the better part of a year doing this, assisted with input from Babbage. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published in the September 1843 edition of Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL.
Ada Lovelace's notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In Note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada Lovelace has often been cited as the first computer programmer for this reason. The engine was never completed and so her program was never tested.
In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B. V. Bowden's Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a computer and software.
Walter Isaacson ascribes Ada's insight regarding the application of computing to any process based on logical symbols to an observation about textiles: "When she saw some mechanical looms that used punchcards to direct the weaving of beautiful patterns, it reminded her of how Babbage's engine used punched cards to make calculations."
This insight is seen as significant by writers such as Betty Toole and Benjamin Woolley, as well as the programmer John Graham-Cumming, whose project Plan 28 has the aim of constructing the first complete Analytical Engine.
