“A tragically flawed woman”
Biographer Miranda Seymour discusses why Ada Lovelace continues to fascinate us today
What inspired you to tell the story of Ada and her mother's relationship?
I am always interested in reviewing the reputations of women who seem to have been unjustly treated by history. In the cases of Ada Lovelace and her mother, I wanted to offer a fresh appraisal of Lady Byron, who was known in her lifetime as a generous philanthropist and far-sighted educational reformer with the acumen of a banker and the heart of a dove. Ada, conversely, has been exalted in a way that has obscured the complex and vibrant personality of a tragically flawed young woman. I set out to write a mother-daughter study that would establish how much Ada was influenced by the father she never knew and by the mother who was both fiercely ambitious for her clever child and terrified of the stresses that might overturn a delicately balanced mind.
Ada us remembered for her work with Babbage and the Analytical Engine. but did she conduct any research into anthing else during her short lifetime?
Ada’s letters refer to other scientific papers, which were evidently lost or destroyed in the great conflagration which took place during her last weeks of life when the family were desperately trying to defend her name. In 1850, two years before her death, she was working on “light-filled drops” and seeking support from Michael Faraday, the greatest experimenter of the day. It was almost impossible for Ada to work without using a male colleague; that was the nature of the times. It’s possible that she was working towards an early version of a spectroscope.
Why do you think the incredible achievements of Ada have been overshadowed by the legacy of her father?
In his own day, Byron became known as the greatest poet of the age. His death at Missolonghi in 1824 transformed a scandalous and exiled libertine into a hero. Today, his poetry is little read and his role in the Greek War of Independence
has been forgotten, except by the Greeks. The statue of him that Greece presented to Britain is trapped on a traffic island: a sadly fitting symbol for an increasingly mythical and neglected figure. Ada, by contrast, is going from strength to strength. In 2018, we celebrate the first decade of Ada Lovelace Day. Ada is the only woman in the world who has a day dedicated to her. But a Lord Byron Day? Forget it.
Do you think Ada's tumultuous life was a rebellion against her mother's wishes for her not to become like Lord Byron?
In personality, Ada was far closer to Byron than to her mother. Ada’s knowledge of her father and his history encouraged her to break with convention. In her early teens, she tried to elope. Later, she adopted an incognito, cooked her own meals, dispensed with a maid, took lovers and entertained men at midnight in the room she called her sanctum. Ada was, in fact, far more of a rebel than her father. She wanted to be treated as the equal of a man. The achievement in which she herself took the greatest pride was to be addressed as a professional working colleague by men like Charles Babbage. That, in the 1840s, was a remarkable thing. Women weren’t even allowed to step foot into scientific institutions like the Royal Society.
Why do you think Ada's complex personality is brushed under the carpet in favour of her work?
Our fascination with technology makes us want to focus on the extraordinary thought that, had the world listened to Ada Lovelace, we could have had a universal computer by the mid-19th century. Ada herself predicted what Babbage’s machine could achieve. Her close friendships with Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday shows that the crucially missing electrical aspect of Babbage’s engine lay within the reach of her inventive mind.
Why do you think Ada has become a trendy figure in popular culture in recent years?
Ada has become a source of inspiration for our technologydriven age. We have an Ada Digital institute, books about Ada for children, a superb graphic novel about Ada by Sydney Padua, documentaries about Ada and almost annual conferences about Ada. We celebrate her not only for the combination of imagination and scientific genius that she displayed in her notes on Charles Babbage’s unbuilt Analytical Engine, but because she was a woman so exceptionally ahead of her time. Ada belongs to our age even more than to her own.