How a 19th century countess saw the future
ADA King, the Countess of Lovelace, was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron. Born in 1815, she showed an early interest in maths and science. It was a time when women were not encouraged to study such subjects but Ada’s aptitude for them was encouraged by her mother who regarded her poet husband as unstable and believed Ada’s studies would help her develop better self-control.
Byron, who was famously described as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, split from Lady Byron barely a month after
Ada was born. She was also encouraged and tutored by Mary Somerville, the Scottish polymath and science writer who was one of the first women to be nominated as a member of the Royal Astronomical Society.
It was Somerville who introduced Ada to mathematician Charles Babbage, the “father of computers” and she became known for her work on the Analytical Engine, his proposed general purpose mechanical computer.
She was arguably the first to realise the machine had applications beyond pure calculation and publish the first algorithm for such a device.
It is this that brought her to be regarded as the first person to understand the full potential of computers and one of the first computer programmers.
Computer scientist Stephan Wolfram said: “When Ada wrote about Babbage’s machine, she wanted to explain what it did in the clearest way — and to do this she looked at the machine more abstractly, with the result that she ended up exploring and articulating something quite recognisable as the modern notion of universal computation.”
Marriage to William King in 1835, a friend of Mary Somerville’s son, and three children, did not stop her working and it was in the early 1840s that she translated an article on Babagge’s calculating engine by Luigi Menabrea, an Italian military engineer. It was her elaborate notes and ideas on the original French text that contain what is thought to be the first computer programme.
Unfortunately, Ada died young in 1852 after a battle with cancer.
Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer and friend of Ada’s, later wrote: “They said she could not possibly have lived so long were it not for the tremendous vitality of the brain that would not die.”
Ada’s achievements were not properly recognised while she was alive and it was not until the middle of the next century that her contributions were appreciated.
In 1980 a newly developed computer language was named Ada in her honour by the US Department of Defence.