Modern computing is riddled with stories of gender bias, boys toys and even wartime successes
for the likes of men… but what about women?* Without Lady Ada
Hey computer-lovers, Trace here for DNews.
We live in a world where we interact with computers all.
the.
time.
And I’m not just talking about your smart phone...
computer systems are in everything; cars, air conditioners, washing machines.
But without the mathematical curiosity of this woman and a chance encounter she had
at a party, we might not be here now.
This is Augusta Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace -- but most just call her Ada Lovelace.
She was one of the first computer programmers, but was born in 1815; wayyy before computers
as we know them were invented.
At the time, during the Industrial Revolution, new inventions were happening left and right,
but they were usually used for one thing.
Sewing machines, sewed.
Steam engines powered a factory.
But with one mathematical invention, and a single academic paper, Lovelace cemented herself
in the history of computer programming.
Ada's mother encouraged her to study mathematics as a child, hoping to drive her away from
the unpredictable poetic ambitions of her father, the English romantic poet Lord Byron.
She merged her creative and analytical ambitions designing boats and flying machines.
But it wasn’t until she met Charles Babbage a professor of mathematics at Cambridge that
she began to express her mathematical intellect.
Babbage had an idea for a calculating machine, called the
Analytical Engine, Lovelace's interest was piqued, and the two started a correspondence.
The thing is, Lovelace had no real training as a mathematician.
So by corresponding with Babbage and other mathematicians, she hoped to learn as much
as she could.
Eventually, an Italian engineer,
Luigi Federico Menabrea wrote a paper on Babbage's analytical engine in French.
Lovelace knew French, so spent months translating, and notating Menabrea's paper.
In the end, her notes were three times longer than the actual work, and she understood the
workings and possibilities of the Analytical Engine better than Babbage, it's inventor!
What's more, within her super-detailed 'Notes' she created a way for the Engine to calculate
Bernoulli numbers… in steps.
I know that doesn't seem like much, but that was the invention of the first computer program!
And even before the digital computer we know today was invented, Lovelace understood its
power, and limitations, writing, “[The Analytical Engine] can do whatever we know how to order
it to perform.
It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or
truths."
Lovelace pushed the idea of the Engine's abilities beyond simple number-crunching and into actual
"computing!"
This was the 19th-century, though.
Another mathematician wrote a series of letters to Lovelace's mother, expressing concern that
women, because they weren't as physically strong, shouldn't exert themselves so heavily
in the area of scholarly application.
He was obviously very wrong about the physiology of men, women and their ability to study math,
but, ironically, Lovelace did die of cancer at age 36.
Regardless of some criticism, because of Lovelace's translation and 'Notes' on the Analytical
Engine, and her correspondence with other mathematicians, people began to think of these
machines as more than just a hulk of single function engineering.
Even though she was never formally trained, other mathematicians of the day thought highly
of Lovelace's work, and her 'Notes' and the translated paper was published in Taylor's
Scientific Memoirs with only her initials "A.A.L.".
Over the next 100 years, Babbage's name wore on, but Lovelace's was relatively obscure…
until the 1940s.
Today, computer programs are running everywhere we look, and some of them can even be written
in a programming language called 'Ada.'
Lovelace was the first realize that a computer, a machine, a series of switches...
could do something way more complicated than any one thing.
With the brain of both an artist and a mathematician, Ada Lovelace showed us all what a computer
could be.
Any other scientists, engineers, researchers or people we should profile?