Six-minute summary: Ada Lovelace

Hello readers! It’s time for a six-minute summary. Ada Lovelace was one of the first computer programmers – an impressive achievement, given that she was born in 1815, well over a century before the modern concept of a “computer” was established. She worked with the eminent mathematician Charles Babbage, who had designed an “Analytical Engine” to solve complex mathematical problems. Ada wrote a paper outlining the machine’s capabilities, describing a future in which every aspect of the world would be described by mathematics and solved by machines.

Daughter of the first celebrity

Ada was the daughter of Lord Byron, the melodramatic, enigmatic, supposedly romantic poet who captured the imagination of Regency-era Britain. He is often cited as the first celebrity, because when he wasn’t churning out best-selling poems, he was involved in scandals so unspeakable that they were all anyone could talk about. He didn’t have a string so much as a never-ending mobius strip of lovers, so it is hardly surprising that his marriage to Ada’s mother, Annabella Millbanke, was short-lived. Soon after Ada was born, Annabella returned to her parents and started the legal proceedings to separate from Byron – all within a year of marrying him. Byron fled the country to escape his debts and scandals, and he never returned. It is safe to say that Ada, being his only legitimate child (heavy emphasis on legitimate), was famous before she published any work of her own.

Problematic parenting

Annabella was convinced that Byron was insane, and she strove to stop Ada from inheriting his madness. The best remedy, in her view, was to force Ada to learn maths and science. Annabella doesn’t appear to have been the most caring of parents: in letters to her mother, she refers to young Ada as “it”, and describes her frustration in interacting with her child. Ada was often left with her grandmother, and although Annabella wrote frequently to ask about Ada’s welfare, she included notes requesting that her letters be kept as evidence for her devotion. Her written displays of affection appear to have been strategic, for use in any legal disputes with Byron should he try to take Ada away.

Annabella only grew more controlling as Ada got older. She sent friends to spy on Ada’s social interactions, keeping watch for any sign of immoral behaviour. Ada was never permitted any contact with Byron. He died abroad when she was eight, and she was only allowed to view his family portrait once she turned twenty.

The Lovelace line

In 1835, Ada married William King, a nobleman and scientist (although his Wiki entry fails to list any scientific work). He styled himself as “The Lord King”, and Ada became “Lady King” – although not for very long. She was distantly related to an extinct line of barons called Lovelace, and in 1838 it was decided that the title should be reinstated. William became “Earl Lovelace”, Ada became a countess, and if the hierarchical titles of the British upper classes seem impenetrably stupid, that’s because they are.

Ada and William had three children. They also had multiple enormous houses, including a park in Surrey, an estate in Scotland, a townhouse in London, and a summerhouse in Somerset. Ada certainly wasn’t feeling any economic strain, and had ample time to spend on her scientific hobbies.

Inheritable immorality and meddling mothers

Unfortunately, Annabella continued to be a controlling presence in Ada’s life. She sent a man named William Carpenter to be a tutor for her grandchildren and a “moral instructor” for Ada. This plan backfired gloriously: Carpenter tried to start an affair with Ada, and Ada turned him down.

However, Annabella’s anxiety over Ada’s morals might not have been completely unfounded. Ada reportedly had a gambling addiction, and there were rumours that she once lost £3000 on a horse race. At one point, she tried to create a mathematical model to maximise her profits – but this went disastrously wrong and left her in even greater debt. There were also rumours that Ada was having affairs outside her marriage – and although some of these were probably exaggerated due to her daring to have male friends in the scientific sphere, there is one, at least, that seems plausible. She had a very close relationship with a man named John Crosse, who destroyed all of their correspondence the moment she died. This certainly seems suspicious. As does the fact that she left him all of Byron’s heirlooms in her will.

Ada died relatively young, at the age of 36, from uterine cancer. Her mother was controlling right until the end, pressuring her into becoming religious and repenting her supposed “sins”. She confessed something to her husband a few months before she died, and he abandoned her, never returning to her bedside. What she said remains a mystery.

Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine

Ada Lovelace was introduced to Charles Babbage by her tutor, the mathematician Mary Somerville, in 1833. They went to one of “Charles Babbage’s Saturday night soirees” (events which are apparently infamous enough to warrant their own Wikipedia page), and Babbage invited Ada to see the prototype for his Difference Engine, a machine for tabulating polynomial equations. Ada was fascinated by his work, and she continued to visit him.

In 1834, Babbage started work on his Analytical Engine, a device that could run multiple calculations in sequence, and store answers for use in later steps (in essence, a general-purpose computer with memory). He presented this idea at a conference in Turin in 1840, and when his presentation was initially written up in French, Ada agreed to translate it into English.

Ada worked on the paper for several months before involving Babbage. She translated the original article, which explained the engine’s mechanisms, then added detailed notes, three times longer than the article itself, that elaborated on its potential uses. The final publication included an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to derive Bernoulli numbers. This was the first computer program ever published.

Controversy over contribution

It isn’t entirely accurate to call Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer. Babbage’s own notes from years earlier could also be considered programs, and neither of them technically programmed anything, because the computer didn’t exist. The extent of Ada’s contribution is debated: did she write the published algorithm herself, write it under Babbage’s supervision, or merely copy it from his notes?

The academic consensus on Ada’s achievements is surprisingly negative. Many science historians insist that her intellectual contribution to the algorithm has been overstated; after all, the Analytical Engine was Babbage’s creation, and Ada was a woman without a university education. Computer scientist Allan Bromley (1947-2002), who helped the Science Museum reconstruct the Difference Engine in the 1980s, asserted that there was “no evidence that Lovelace ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine” and that she “did not have the knowledge to do so.” His view has been repeated in countless textbooks and journal articles, and only recently have opinions started to shift.

Lovelace’s letters

The letters between Babbage and Lovelace, and from Babbage to his peers, provide evidence of their working relationship. By Babbage’s own account: “We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several, but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.”

In the 1980s, Bromley interpreted this account as evidence of Ada doing very little work. He re-classified the “grave mistake” as a “bug” – and insisted that this discovery was her only contribution.

However, it is clear from Ada’s letters that she was the driving force behind the publication. She made the first mention of Bernoulli numbers, when she wrote to Babbage: “I want to put something about Bernoulli’s Numbers in one of my notes, as an example of how an implicit function may be worked out by the engine, without having been worked out by human head and hands first. Give me the necessary data and formulae.” Babbage provided her with the data, as she had demanded, and she converted this into an algorithm. She later wrote to him: “I hope you will approve of what I send. I have explained that there would be, in this instance and in many others, a recurring group or cycle of Variable as well as of Operation cards.” Here, in essence, she is describing what we would now call a “nested loop”. And, with the exception of an errant minus sign, her algorithm works. You can run it on computers today (somebody once implemented it in Fortran).

Obscurity and re-discovery

Sadly, Babbage never built the Analytical Engine. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that the first general-purpose, programmable computer was developed, and in that time, Ada Lovelace’s contributions were largely forgotten. Her work only started to be discussed in earnest in the late-twentieth century, when historians started accusing each other of exaggerating or belittling her achievements to suit their own agendas. Evidence is still emerging to this day, and it is only recently that a consensus has been reached.

Of course, there wouldn’t be any controversy if she wasn’t a woman…

If Ada Lovelace’s contribution is overstated, it is in aid of promoting female role models in the sciences. If her contribution is downplayed, it is by people pushing back against this agenda. And between these extremes, it can be difficult to find the truth, even when reading the evidence for yourself. In the last ten years, the academic viewpoint seems to have shifted towards recognising Ada’s contributions, but her Wiki page still contains a “controversy” section that begins with Bromley’s interpretation.

There is no question that Ada Lovelace’s fame is largely a result of her sex. She stands out in a field crowded with men, providing proof that women can succeed against the odds. But isn’t it a little depressing that Ada Lovelace is still one of the most famous women in computer sciences, nearly two hundred years later?

The controversy that nobody is talking about

While I was reading Ada’s letters, I realised that there was a contributor to her paper who went entirely uncredited. In what is, perhaps, the most amusing section of her correspondence to Babbage, Ada writes: “You will admire the Table and Diagram extremely. They have been made out with extreme care and all the indices most minutely and scrupulously attended to. Lord Lovelace is at this moment inking it all over for me. I had to do it in pencil.” I must admit that the thought of her husband, Earl Lovelace FRS, being tasked with inking over his wife’s diagrams, made me chuckle.

Unfortunately, the main conclusion I draw from Ada’s letters is that she was rather rude. “You will admire the Table. Give me the necessary data.” No please or thank you to be found here. But maybe Babbage didn’t mind. He could also be very blunt.

Legacy

Ada Lovelace had a vision for computers beyond basic calculations. She suggested that the Analytical Engine “might act upon other things besides number” if objects and their interactions could be expressed via numerical operations. She used music as an example, stating that notes, harmonies and rhythms followed mathematical rules, and could therefore be pitched as a problem to solve. This was the first time that anyone had suggested using computers for anything besides pure maths. And she predicted this 180 years before AI started composing dull synthesizer tracks for Netflix crime documentaries.

Ada’s imagination cannot be up for debate. She was writing about a machine that would never be built, advocating its uses to an audience who couldn’t comprehend the possibilities. The sad truth is that her words were lost on them. Not long after the paper was published, the Prime Minister cut Babbage’s funding, and the Analytical Engine was never built.

In summary…

This one was a little longer than six minutes, but I thought the controversy was worth discussing. Ada Lovelace is such a fascinating character that I’m sure people will keep digging up her old letters and diaries, giving us a deeper insight into her musings. She was certainly full of ideas, and you have to wonder what she would make of our computer-dominated modern lives. Would she approve of AI music? I doubt it.

Happy reading, and have a lovely week!