[GAP] Happy Birthday Ada Lovelace

[John McCormick]

On December 10, 1815, Anna Isabella (Annabella) Byron, whose husband 
was Lord Byron, gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada.  Ada's father 
was a romantic poet whose fame derived not only from his works but 
also from his wild and scandalous behavior.  His marriage to 
Annabella was strained from the beginning, and Annabella left Byron 
just a little more than a month after Ada was born.  By April of that 
year, Annabella and Byron signed separation papers, and Byron left 
England, never to return.

Byron's writings show that he greatly regretted that he was unable to 
see his daughter. In one poem, for example, he wrote of Ada,

         I see thee not.  I hear thee not.
         But none can be so rapt in thee.

Byron died in Greece at the age of 36, and one of the last things he said was,

         Oh my poor dear child! My dear Ada! My God, could I but have seen her!

Meanwhile, Annabella, who was eventually to become a baroness in her 
own right, and who was herself educated as both a mathematician and a 
poet, carried on with Ada's upbringing and education.  Annabella gave 
Ada her first instruction in mathematics, but it soon became clear 
that Ada's gift for the subject was such that it required more 
extensive tutoring.  Ada received further training in mathematics 
from Augustus DeMorgan, who is today famous for one of the basic 
theorems of Boolean algebra, which forms the basis for modern 
computers.  By the age of eight, Ada also had demonstrated an 
interest in mechanical devices and was building detailed model boats.

When she was 18, Ada visited the Mechanics Institute to hear Dr. 
Dionysius Lardner's lectures on the "difference engine," a mechanical 
calculating machine being built by Charles Babbage.  She became so 
interested in the device that she arranged to be introduced to 
Babbage.  It was said that, upon seeing Babbage's machine, Ada was 
the only person in the room to understand immediately how it worked 
and to appreciate its significance.

Ada and Babbage became good friends and she worked with him for the 
rest of her life, helping to document his designs, translating 
writings about his work, and developing programs to be used on his 
machines.  Unfortunately, Babbage never completed construction of any 
of his designs.  Even so, today Ada is recognized as being the first 
computer programmer in history. That title, however, does not do full 
justice to her genius.

Around the time that Babbage met Ada, he began the design for an even 
more ambitious machine called the "analytical engine," which we now 
recognize was the first programmable computer.  Ada instantly grasped 
the implications of the device and foresaw its application in ways 
that even Babbage did not imagine.  Ada believed that mathematics 
eventually would develop into a system of symbols that could be used 
to represent anything in the universe.  From her notes, it is clear 
that Ada saw that the analytical engine could go beyond arithmetic 
computations and become a general manipulator of symbols, and thus it 
would be capable of almost anything.  She even suggested that such a 
device could eventually be programmed with rules of harmony and 
composition so that it could produce "scientific" music.  In effect, 
Ada foresaw the field of artificial intelligence over 150 years ago.

In 1842, Babbage went to Turin, Italy, and gave a series of lectures 
on his analytical engine.  One of the attendees was Luigi Menabrea, 
who was so impressed that he wrote an account of Babbage's 
lectures.  At age 27, Ada decided to translate the account into 
English, with the intent to add a few of her own notes about the 
machine.  In the end, her notes were twice as long as the original 
material, and the document, "The Sketch of the Analytical Engine," 
became the definitive work on the subject.

It is obvious from Ada's letters that her "notes" were entirely her 
own and that Babbage was acting as a sometimes unappreciated editor. 
At one point, Ada wrote to him,

"I am much annoyed at your having altered my Note.  You know I am 
always willing to make any required alterations myself, but that I 
cannot endure another person to meddle with my sentences."

Ada gained the title Countess of Lovelace when she married Lord 
William Lovelace.  The couple had three children, but Ada was so 
consumed by her love of mathematics that she left their upbringing to 
her mother.  For a woman of that day, such behavior was considered 
almost as scandalous as some of her father's exploits, but her 
husband was actually quite supportive of her work.

In 1852, Ada died from cancer.  Sadly, if she had lived just one year 
longer, she would have witnessed the unveiling of a working 
difference engine built from one of Babbage's designs by George and 
Edward Scheutz in Sweden.  Like her father, Ada lived only until she 
was 36, and, even though they led much different lives, she 
undoubtedly admired Byron and took inspiration from his 
unconventional and rebellious nature.  At the end, Ada asked to be 
buried beside him at the family's estate.

---------------------------
Ada Lovelace biography material excerpted from "Programming and 
Problem Solving with Ada" by Dale, Weems, and McCormick.  Jones & 
Bartlett Publishers, 2000.

The film "To Dream Tomorrow" from Flare Productions, 
www.flarefilms.org, tells the story of Ada Lovelace and her 
contributions to computing.   I recommend showiing it to your students.


John


John W. McCormick                mccormick at cs.uni.edu
Computer Science Department
University of Northern Iowa        voice (319) 273-6056
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0507       fax (319) 273-7123
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~mccormic/