Ada Lovelace, the illegitimate daughter of poet Lord Byron, grew up in Victorian times when women were not expected to be interested in science or technology and were even routinely denied an education. But with her mother’s encouragement, Ada was determined not only to learn all she could at the time, but also to contribute to new discoveries and make history herself.
The English mathematician and father of computing Charles Babbage, who made the leap from slide rules and the first calculating machines such as those designed by Schickard, Pascal and Leibnitz, was far ahead of his time with his ideas. In the early 19th century, however, the brilliant mathematician and Babbage’s pupil Ada Lovelace, long before the appearance of the first computers such as the Colossus or the Harvard Mark I, appreciated that machines could achieve much more than mathematical computation.
In 1843, she published the world’s first machine algorithm for a computing machine that existed only on paper, but although she saw further into the future than any of her male counterparts, Ada Lovelace’s legacy went unnoticed for hundreds of years.
Charles Babbage was very disturbed by the errors and shortcomings he had observed in the computational operations of computing machines up to that time, and decided to go beyond the systems of these machines, which were based on the logic and method of computation used by man. In 1833, he had the brilliant idea that it was possible to build an analytical machine that was, in its basic principle of operation, like today’s modern computers, thus anticipating his contemporaries by almost a hundred years.
His propagandist and brilliant and close colleague Ada Lovelace offered to help him in finding financial support to build the machine, but he refused her help because he did not agree to the conditions she set. What would have happened if he had not refused her?
The development of computers would have started a century earlier, but Babbage’s huge mathematical mechanical machine remained forgotten until the middle of the 20th century. Then Ada Lovelace’s notes on the machine were found by Alan Turing, the pioneer of modern computing, and the computer age boomed.
A grand but dilapidated home
Ada Lovelace, as she is known today, was born Augusta Ada Byron and began life in a troubled family environment. She was the only legitimate daughter of the Romantic poet George Gordon Byron and Anna Isabella Milbanke, or Annabelle as she was called.
Annabella was a highly intelligent woman, having been educated by former Cambridge professors in classical literature, philosophy, natural science and, her particular favourite, mathematics. Her parents, Sir Ralph and Judith Milbanke, married for love and brought her up alone, creating a close-knit family that certainly influenced Annabella’s expectations for her own future.
George was the son of Captain John Byron, known as ‘Mad Jack’, and his second wife, Catherine Gordon, a direct descendant and heiress of King James I of Scotland, whose fortune Jack squandered until his early death at the age of 35.
Young George, who inherited the title Baron Byron from his great-uncle at the age of 10, was brought up by a schizophrenic mother with a violent temper and an abusive nanny. These experiences, and the fact that his deformed right foot caused him to limp, which made him a target of ridicule at school, may have influenced his constant need for love, which later manifested itself in numerous affairs with both women and men.
When the first two editions of his lyric-epic poem The Pilgrimage of Count Harold sold out, Byron became a celebrity. He was the topic of almost every conversation, making men jealous of him and women jealous of each other. He was invited into the homes of the most prestigious families, and everyone admired the boisterous, eccentric poet with the sharp tongue. All except Annabella, who met Byron in 1812 at a party given by her cousin William Lamb. His wife, Lady Lamb, had a brief affair with the poet, but made no effort to hide it, a scandal that shocked the British public.
Byron was attracted by Annabella’s modesty and intellect, and within a few months he proposed marriage to her. But the morally depraved poet was not at first interested in the very pious girl, so she responded by listing all the defects of his character and rejected him.
Nevertheless, they were accompanied by a persistent interest in each other and after a second betrothal two years later, Annabella changed her mind, convinced that it was her religious duty to “improve his behaviour and lead him to virtue”.
They married in January 1815, but the marriage was far from happy. Byron, who was in dire financial straits, was volatile to say the least and would fly into a rage at the slightest provocation. He always carried two pistols and a shotgun, so when he threatened to kill Annabella or himself, he was terribly credible.
His mood was gloomy, he took laudanum, he started drinking too much and Annabella feared that her husband was on the verge of madness. While she was heavily pregnant, Byron sent a message to her bedroom, ordering her to stop pacing on the creaking parquet floor because the noise was getting on his nerves and on those of his half-sister Augusta Leigh, who lived with them most of the time.
On 10 December 1815 Lady Byron gave birth to a baby girl, named Augusta. Byron was disappointed by the birth of his daughter, as he wanted “a magnificent son to carry on the family name”.
The disillusioned poet continued to accumulate debts, had numerous affairs which he made no attempt to hide, and became increasingly cruel and violent towards his wife, who justified his behaviour on the grounds of the tendency to madness in Byron’s family.
In January 1816, when the Byrons celebrated their first anniversary, Byron wrote a letter to his wife recommending that she and their daughter leave their rented house in Piccadilly Terrace, London, as soon as possible. Annabella and her five-week-old daughter returned to her parents’ home in Kirkby Mallory, and soon asked for a divorce. During the proceedings, she revealed her suspicions that Lord Byron was having an incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, and several homosexual relationships, which were illegal at the time.
At a time when women were not allowed to own property and generally had few legal rights, Annabella managed to secure custody of her daughter. Lord Byron did not attempt to assert parental rights, aware of his guilt, but demanded that his half-sister Augusta keep him informed of his daughter’s welfare.
Annabella and Ada, as little Augusta came to be called after the divorce, never saw Byron again. In April 1816, he went into self-imposed exile and fled England, leaving behind a failed marriage, notorious affairs and mounting debts. He never returned.
Byron seems to have been at least a little affected by the divorce; he wrote a poem to mark the occasion, beginning with the line: ‘Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child! Ada! The only daughter of my birth and heart?”
But no amount of poetry could compensate for the fact that Ada grew up without a father – and unfortunately her bitter, cold and distant mother provided little comfort.
When Ada was eight, Lord Byron died in Missolonghi after falling ill during the Greek War of Independence. But his shadow remained ever present: his distorted character permeated the lives of the two women, who had to be strong to ward off the stain of association with a man whose rumours of incest and sodomy were a constant source of gossip.
Ada’s early years
Annabella’s and Ada’s lives were shaped by rumours, but Lady Byron never made any public statement about her reasons for separating from Byron. To protect her daughter from scandal, she had to live very prudently, and so she never remarried. She replaced fashionable London society with a society of irredeemably dull vicars and middle-aged single women devoted to good works in quiet country towns.
Yet everywhere they travelled, people stared and pointed at her and her daughter. Avoiding the shame associated with her husband’s name became Annabella’s lifelong project, even though both mother and daughter were proud of their association with a poet adored by many readers.
Ada spent her early years on a secluded estate in rural Leicestershire, where she was adored and pampered by her grandparents and an indulgent household of servants and governesses. Annabella became increasingly dependent on doctors, which was attributed to her self-loving hypochondria. She often went away for long periods of time for various and often bizarre treatments, which meant that she and Ada did not have a close relationship. They often quarrelled as the girl resisted her mother’s authority. Ada’s rebelliousness and restless temperament increasingly exhausted her governesses.
Annabella did not bother much with her daughter for the first few years, and when she spoke of her, she did not call her by her first name, but often referred to little Ada as “that one”. All correspondence from that time was just “putting up a facade” of motherly love.
Like many other aristocratic children, Ada was educated at home and her mother made sure that she had the best private tutors available. At her mother’s insistence, she was taught history, literature, foreign languages, geography, music, chemistry, sewing, shorthand and mathematics up to the level of elementary geometry and algebra.
Such demanding subjects were not common for women at that time, but Annabella believed that a strict system of education would prevent Ada from developing her father’s capricious and tempestuous temperament, gloomy disposition and madness. Believing that the training in self-discipline would help young Ada to develop the self-control necessary for in-depth analytical thought, Lady Byron forced her to lie still for hours.
At the age of eleven, the girl and her mother set off on a 15-month journey to the continent. The European tour offers moving evidence of the feelings Lady Byron harbored for her late husband.
In England, she anonymously visited Harrow, the abandoned house on Piccadilly Terrace and even Newstead Abbey, where the emotional experience of standing in Byron’s private chambers overwhelmed her. On her arrival in Switzerland, Lady Byron organised a sailing trip on Lake Geneva to see the villa where her husband had spent the summer of 1816. In Genoa, the city from which Byron set off for Greece, Annabella hired for Ada a singing and drawing teacher, “Signor” Isola, who was chosen precisely because he claimed to know and like Lord Byron.
Little record survives of Ada’s feelings about the journey, apart from a few of her drawings, together with anxious reports to Lady Byron’s friends in England of her mother’s failing health, in which the journey reawakened an unforeseen storm of emotion and grief.
On her return to England, Lady Byron fell seriously ill and went for treatment, leaving Ada to her new governess, Mrs Stamp. Although Mrs Stamp was a great ally of Ada’s, the little girl missed her mother and perhaps that is why she put so much time and effort into designing the flying machine. She decided that she wanted to fly.
She approached the project methodically and thoughtfully, with imagination and passion. To better understand the mechanics of flight, she studied the anatomy of birds and considered the suitability of different materials to make wings. The young girl first illustrated plans to build a flying machine with wings and then moved on to thinking about steam-powered flight.
She wrote to her mother about writing a Flyology book and her hopes to bring the art of flight to great perfection. In the book, Ada also planned the equipment and explained how she would determine the optimum flight paths for navigating around England. In the end, her steam-powered flying machine never left the pages of her book, but anyone who read Flyology quickly realised that the young girl who created it was destined for great things.
Barely twelve years old, Ada conceived the concept of a mechanical, steam-powered flying horse fifteen years before the air-powered steam carriage patented in 1842 by William Henson and John Stringfellow. But her interest in flying passed when young Ada became fascinated by the stars and horse riding.
Lady Byron encouraged her daughter’s interests and arranged for Ada to be tutored by some of England’s finest Victorian minds, such as the social reformer William Frend, the family physician William King and her mother’s friend Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician. Somerville was one of the first women to be admitted to the Royal Astronomical Society.
Lady Byron’s motivation, however, was not only to expand Ada’s mind: she hoped that the close study of mathematics and natural science would instil some mental discipline in her daughter and exorcise any demons that might otherwise plague her. But despite her mother’s great efforts, Ada inherited many of her father’s rebellious traits.
Lady Byron instructed some of her close friends to watch young Ada like vultures to make sure that the teenager showed no signs of moral deviation. Ada called these watchers “furies” and complained that they were making her life miserable with their exaggerated stories about her.
“Damaged goods”
Over-excitement, the onset of puberty, the departure of her beloved governess Mrs Stamp and illness – the combination of these things brought Ada’s year of enthusiastic dreams to a shocking end. The restless girl suffered from migraine headaches that blurred her vision from the age of eight, and in 1829 measles and possibly even encephalitis left her partially paralysed and half-blind for three years.
She and her mother moved to the outskirts of London, first to Notting Hill and then, in 1830, to The Limes, a large and beautiful house on the banks of the Thames in the Mortlake neighbourhood. Here, near the best doctors London had to offer, Lady Byron spared no expense to cure her daughter’s complicated illness. After more than a year of uninterrupted bed rest, Ada was able to walk with crutches. Watching boats and river birds now constituted her whole outside life.
But despite her illness, she continued to find fulfilment in mathematics, while at the same time developing an interest in new technologies.
With her daughter still bedridden, Annabella decided to introduce Ada to her father’s poems. The first copy of each new poem and play created by her husband was provided to Lady Byron, at her request, every year from 1816 by John Murray, the Scottish publisher who published Byron’s works. Annabella remained fond of the memory of Byron and was disappointed by her daughter’s response. Ada cared little for her father’s poems, and is even reported to have once said, “One day I shall be a better mathematician than my father was a poet!”
In the summer of 1832, when the Byrons settled in their new home in Ealing, the 16-year-old Ada had recovered sufficiently to take her first trip with her mother to Brighton, the favourite residence of King William IV of England. There, she was finally well enough to realise her fondest childhood dream: to ride a horse.
She then embarked on a new project: to become a farmer. Her mother encouraged her greatly until, in early 1833, she learned that her daughter’s keen interest in the Ealing land had become a cover for secret meetings in the garden shed at Fordhook, where she had passionately embraced – and then some – with a young man who had been hired to teach Mrs Byron shorthand for taking notes of lectures.
Ada, who had been ordered to behave decently, showed her “wild side” and ran away, taking refuge in the home of her lover’s family. His parents, fearful of angering such a strong personality as Lady Byron, quickly escorted the young lady back to Fordhook, and William Turner, Ada’s shorthand teacher, was promptly dismissed.
Ada escaped public disgrace, but enough people in Lady Byron’s social circle knew what had happened and her daughter came to be seen as “damaged goods”. Proof that the rumours had spread came from the New York Mirror in 1833, which confided to its readers that “Ada Byron, the only daughter of a noble poet, is the most lewd and vulgar woman in England”.
When the desperate Annabella announced that she would control and restrain her untamable daughter, the volatile Ada wrote back that she was ready to be guided by her mother, but that she also had her own right to freedom: “Up to the age of twenty-one, the law gives you the power of enforcing obedience in all points; but I believe that at that time your power and your claim cease.”
Ada’s sharply and clearly worded letter marked the beginning of a complex lifelong struggle between two indomitable characters: a mother with an exceptionally strong will and a daughter who was certainly her match in this respect.
A mathematical friendship
The willful 17-year-old teenager was showing all the signs of becoming alarmingly unmanageable, and the exhausted Annabella, who had run out of ways to control her daughter, found her a new teacher.
Her mother’s friend Mary Somerville, a petite Scotswoman, was renowned as a science writer, mathematician and theoretical astronomer who was among the first women invited to join the Royal Astronomical Society. Ada found in her a benevolent and understanding mentor who treated the girl as her own daughter.
Somerville took her inquisitive pupil to one of the famous private scientific debates at the London home of her closest friend. His name was Charles Babbage. Among those invited were distinguished noblemen, artists, scientists and, in general, anyone who counted in London society.
Ada encountered a mind that was as inquisitive, lively and playfully whimsical as her own. She was fascinated by Babbage’s inventions, and he by her intellect, analytical skills and mathematical knowledge. Despite the vast age difference – Ada was seventeen and Babbage forty-two – they soon forged a friendship that changed Ada’s life.
Charles Babbage, an inventor and mechanical engineer, was known for his visionary and always unfinished designs for huge computing machines. When Ada met him, he was working on a mechanical calculating machine he called the Difference Machine. At that time, a mathematician had to use large tables of numbers for calculations requiring logarithmic or trigonometric functions, and Babbage’s vision was that his differential machine would calculate these tables flawlessly, eliminating human error.
In 1832, he successfully completed a small working demonstration of a prototype differential machine that was one-seventh of a calculating machine, which was all Babbage could show after a decade of design and effort. And that is what Ada saw in June 1833.
Lady Byron was convinced that it was some kind of “thinking thing”, but Ada was sceptical. It seemed to her that such a machine could hardly be credited with the ability to think, even if it could calculate. To better understand how the machine worked, she asked Babbage for copies of the blueprints.
The British government invested around £17,000 (today around €1.9 million) in Babbage’s differential machine in the hope that Babbage would build it. Reliable machine computation of mathematical tables was very important at that time for mathematical calculations for navigation, construction and all other kinds of practical functions.
But Babbage had other ideas in 1834. He abandoned the differential machine before it was finished and started work on an even more complex analytical machine.
It was to be programmed using punched cards similar to those used in the looms designed by Joseph Marie Jacquard. Separate sets of cards made up what would now be called a programme and provided the initial values for the calculations.
A complex mechanism allowed the machine to repeat a set of cards by performing a loop. The hardware included many new and complex mechanisms and was designed on a large scale. Babbage estimated that multiplying two 20-digit numbers would take three minutes, and the machine would need steam power.
The British government was not enthusiastic about the new project, as Babbage had not completed the previous one and, much to his annoyance, refused to fund it.
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Countess Lovelace
When Ada turned nineteen, her mother and Mary Somerville began to look for a husband who would have to be special enough to appreciate and understand this strange and eccentric girl. Ada was no help. Her lack of concern for how she dressed drew critical comments and the scandal with the shorthand teacher was even whispered about on the other side of the Atlantic.
Her enthusiasm for mathematics, horse-riding and music was over-zealous and extreme, and she was clearly not fit to be a bishop’s wife or the usual well-mannered lady-in-waiting. She was in danger of remaining unmarried and, in her mature years, dependent on the indulgent care of understanding friends.
A glimmer of hope of breaking free from her mother’s control was seen in Ada’s marriage to an English nobleman, William King, a schoolmate of Mary’s son. Lord King, a distinguished but somewhat rigid man with an interest in the world of science, came from a long line of landowners. He was ten years older than Ada and utterly fascinated by the legendary personality of her father, Lord Byron. He was also the first of many suitors who was not intimidated by the girl’s cleverness and curiosity and, at least at first, was not disturbed by a touch of Byronic scandal.
In one of the first letters she wrote to her future husband, Ada thanked him for overlooking her unflattering past and focusing on her good qualities.
William and Ada married in July 1835 and had three children; Byron, Anne Isabella and Ralph Gordon. The family was split between three homes – they had a country house at Ockham Park in England, an estate at The Torridon in Scotland and a house in London. The Kings enjoyed a convivial social life, socialising with the brightest minds of the day, from the novelist Charles Dickens to the scientist Michael Faraday.
A distant relative of King’s was Prime Minister at the time, and in 1838 he intervened with Queen Victoria to grant William King the peerage of Earl of Lovelace, making Ada Countess. In correspondence she signed her name as Augusta Ada Lovelace or AAL, but today she is known as Ada Lovelace.
The next few years of Ada’s life seem to have been spent raising her three children and running a large household, riding and playing the harp. But family life did not quench the flame of passion for science that raged within her, and the role of the unassuming, dutiful wife and caring mother was not enough for her. Her mind craved a challenge, so she resumed her studies in mathematics.
She asked Charles Babbage to be her tutor, but he declined, but put her in touch with Auguste de Morgan, a pioneer in symbolic logic research. A bright young woman, De Morgan was astonished by her mathematical abilities. “If Ada had been a man”, he said, “she would have had the potential to become an outstanding mathematical researcher, perhaps a first-class eminence.”
De Morgan not only refused to pay, but voluntarily took “this most unconventional student” under his wing, which further boosted Ada’s confidence and energy.
The Count of Lovelace supported his wife’s academic interests, which was somewhat unusual for the time. He copied out articles for her in libraries because, as a woman, she did not have access to scientific libraries.
Ada’s relationship with her mother was still complicated. Outwardly it appeared to be respectful, but it seems that Ada still often had to deal with her mother’s attempts to control and manipulate her. Annabella Byron constantly complained about her health and lamented that she would soon die (she actually lived to be sixty-four).
She increasingly criticised her daughter for her child-rearing, housekeeping and social behaviour, so Ada, who had by then gained enough self-confidence, wrote her a very frank letter in 1841 about her thoughts and aspirations. She spoke of her own ambition, her “insatiable and restless energy” and her expectation to do great things.
Shortly afterwards, her mother revealed the allegation that Lord Byron and his half-sister Augusta Leigh had had a child together before Ada was born. Although incest was not illegal in England at the time, Ada found the revelation very difficult to bear and for a time lost her love of mathematics.
Fearing that her father’s incestuous tendencies would be repeated, she imposed a strict rule on her three children, namely that they were never to be alone with each other.
Ada Lovelace had intermittent health problems for several years, which worsened after her third childbirth and a bout of cholera, and she began systematically taking opiates, which at the time were painkillers but caused mood swings and hallucinations. Eventually, she recognised her dependence on drugs such as morphine and opium and, after several months, successfully quit them.
She really wanted to excel at something and started to think that maybe it should be music or literature rather than mathematics. But her husband William seems to have dissuaded her from this, and at the end of 1842 she took up mathematics again.
Back to Babbage
Babbage, with whom Ada continued to correspond and maintain a friendship, lectured on the analytical machine at the University of Turin in 1842. Frustrated by the lack of support from the British scientific establishment, he began to look abroad for funds to continue his research and complete his project.
Among the audience was Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian mathematician, an officer in the Engineers, who, on the basis of extensive notes taken at the inventor’s lecture, published a report on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine in the scientific journal Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve in October of the same year.
This is the first report on the logical design of a prototype computing machine, including the first examples of computer programs ever published. Babbage’s design of the analytical machine was so far ahead of the imagination of his mathematical and scientific colleagues that few expressed curiosity about it.
Babbage’s friend Charles Wheatstone, inventor of the electric telegraph, asked Countess Lovelace to translate the article from the original French into English, and Ada set to work feverishly. Over the following months, she exchanged letters with Babbage on an almost daily basis. She asked Babbage questions, he answered her; she explained something, Babbage commented on it.
Her understanding and knowledge of the machine was far superior to Menabrea’s, so she confidently corrected any errors she encountered during the translation process and, on Babbage’s advice, supplemented the report with extensive annotations of her own and even more elaborate sketches than those drawn by Babbage.
After nine months, the English version was completed and Ada’s comments and explanations expanded the planned design and operation of Babbage’s machine. Menabrea’s original paper was 20 pages long, while Ada Lovelace’s notes were two and a half times longer, 52 pages.
This comparison alone shows that Ada was by no means confined to the role of commentator. She understood Babbage’s analytical machine so deeply that in some respects she surpassed the inventor himself, who viewed computers as manipulators of numbers. She was convinced that any machine capable of manipulating numbers could also manipulate symbols and foresaw the creative possibilities of the machine beyond mathematics, even for composing music.
Her notes, which she labelled alphabetically from A to G, included the first published description of a step-by-step sequence of operations for solving certain mathematical problems, including a set of instructions for calculating Bernoulli numbers, a complex number system, which is why Ada Lovelace is often considered the first computer programmer.
The main purpose of publishing her translation and the accompanying notes was to revive public interest in Babbage’s new invention and to secure sufficient investment to build it.
In early August 1843, Babbage, quite unannounced, prepared his preface and expressed his wish to be included in the article. Babbage, who was no master of diplomacy, in the preface, to Ada’s horror, took a swipe at the British government for letting him down.
Such a public display of aggression threatened to undo all of Ada’s efforts, but Babbage was upset when asked to reconsider his preface. Although he eventually relented and withdrew the preface, their dispute exacerbated their long-standing friendship and cooperation.
The English translation of Menabrea’s article, with Ada’s notes added, was published at the end of August 1843 in a print run of 250 copies, signed by Ada with the initials AAL, as she did not want to reveal her gender. In English society at the time, many considered it scandalous for a woman to write scientific papers.
The bitterness between the two friends evaporated after a year, and Ada’s letters to Babbage were again full of details of the mathematical books she was reading, reports on the progress of her children, and the antics of her dogs, chickens and starlings. Although they never worked together again, Babbage continued to speak admiringly of Lovelace, affectionately calling her “the number witch”.
After the publication of the article, Ada Lovelace wanted to improve her knowledge, so she wrote to Faraday to persuade him to teach her. Faraday, one of the most influential scientists in history, especially in the field of electricity, was honoured by Ada’s attention, but – presumably because of her vivacious nature – turned her down.
Scandalous rumours and undermined health
Of all the roles, Ada enjoyed motherhood the least. As a mother, she was both indifferent and capricious and demanding. Since she started translating the Menabreai, she has been focused on her scientific career. Nevertheless, she had carefully sought a competent teacher to teach her three young children, because Lovelace, as a follower of the spiritual orientation of universal Unitarianism, did not want to enrol her children in mainstream Anglican schools.
Lady Byron suggested the ambitious William Carpenter, a young academic on the rise, as a home tutor and educator for her “untamable” grandchildren. Trouble soon began, as Carpenter, though newly married, was overly susceptible to the charms of his charismatic young employer.
Ada had dismissed her children’s amorous teacher, but rumours of her “casual relationships with men who were not her husbands” were increasingly circulating in the public domain. This was fuelled by scathingly accusatory comments in the London newspapers, and by her “suspicious” relationship with Crosse’s eldest son, John, which began in 1844 and lasted until her death.
Andrew Crosse was a scientist with a great passion for electricity and Ada often visited him at his home, where she met John.
The full details of Ada’s involvement in many of the affairs attributed to her remain a mystery, as the Earl of Lovelace had most of her correspondence destroyed after his wife’s death.
Science was not the only “manly” activity that Ada enjoyed. John Crosse fascinated her with horse-racing betting, which had always been a passion of the English upper classes. But Ada was not a good bettor, and once lost £3,200 (about €360,000 today) on the wrong horse in the Epsom Derby.
As she was also betting to raise the money needed to further improve the Babbage machine, she ambitiously tried to develop a mathematical model for successful big betting wins. Unfortunately, her plans failed disastrously and put her in financial peril, as she accumulated huge debts and became involved with a group of con artists who later blackmailed her.
These persecutions, threats and failures to create a system to win the Games may have undermined her health. The health problems that had plagued her all her life returned and she spent months travelling from one doctor to another in an attempt to recover. Unfortunately, in Victorian England, medicine was more of an art than a science.
The opiates she was taking were no longer helping, so she experimented with a lesser-known painkiller, cannabis, and her mother Annabella suggested hypnosis. But no matter what she tried, it was too late to save her. Ada Lovelace had cancer of the womb and was dying.
In mid-August 1852, she asked Charles Dickens to read to her at her bedside the story of her death from one of his books.
Although her mother had never really stood by her in her life, she now took full charge of her dying daughter and increasingly isolated her from friends and confidants.
At the end of August, Ada called William to her bedside and confessed something. It is not known what she told him, but it must have been horrifying enough, because that day her husband left their home for good. The only surviving record is that of the usually reticent Earl of Lovelace: “During the last week I have been the victim of the worst mental misery – all the cherished convictions of my married life have been shattered.”
Although abandoned by her husband and isolated by her mother, Ada Lovelace endured another three agonising months, despite severe pain and near death. She might have lived longer, but the excessive blood leakage that doctors treated her with probably hastened her death.
Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace, as her full name was, died on 27 November 1852, aged just 36, like her father. Her close friend Florence Nightingale later wrote: “It is said that she could not have lived so long had it not been for the extraordinary vitality of her brain, which refused to die.”
Over the years, Ada became more and more identified with her father, Lord Byron, and she once wrote that she understood his motives, as she herself hated any kind of restriction. Finally, she expressed her wish to be buried beside him in St Mary Magdalene Church in Hucknall, Nottingham. Perhaps her wish was born out of a genuine affection for her famous father, whom she did not know, but with whom she had always felt a deep connection, or perhaps it was just a last rebellious gesture to her mother.
Ada Lovelace was buried in an extremely modest private ceremony, which was not attended by Charles Babbage, her long-time friend, or by her mother.
Even in her old age, Annabella remained publicly silent as Byron’s biographers and admirers bombarded her with criticism and cruelty. This distorted view of Lady Byron was later translated into unsympathetic portrayals of her daughter’s life and achievements, and can be seen in many of Ada’s biographies.
The real Lady Byron was a progressive and founded two schools based on the principles of ‘joy’ and co-operation, eschewing the then preference for corporal punishment and humiliation. She was a philanthropist who supported the middle and working classes, trade unionists, religious dissidents and escaped slaves.
Historical controversy
Like many women who have made significant contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics over the centuries, Ada Lovelace has her share of men who try to belittle her achievements.
One Babbage historian went so far as to describe her as “a manic-depressive woman with the most incredible delusions about her own talents and a rather shallow understanding of Charles Babbage and his analytical machine.”
At the heart of the historical controversy is whether Lovelace really deserves credit for the programme, or whether her contemporaries who gave her credit for it were merely chivalrous to the extreme, and perhaps only “generous” to Lord Byron’s only daughter and his wife.
Babbage’s design of the Analytical Engine was astonishing and none of his contemporaries seem to have really understood the significance of the machine. No one but Ada Lovelace.
Indeed, her notes to Menabreay’s article contain visionary insights into the challenges of using computers, and the idea of a general-purpose computer was ground-breaking. Ada’s notes show that this was not just a random flight of imagination, but a concept that she had thought about thoroughly and that had a solid basis in theory.
Lovelace and Babbage worked as a team and, as with many teams, there is no definitive documentation explaining exactly who did what. Many historians, however, give Lovelace the credit he deserves. Before Ada, no one could explain Babbage’s work so elegantly and sophisticatedly. Footnote G, in particular, bore the unmistakable stamp of her hand and was a more detailed explanation of the use of the analytical machine than even Babbage had given before.
Although much has changed in the last two hundred years, many women still feel that their contributions to understanding the world are ignored or that recognition is given to their male counterparts.
But Ada Lovelace’s ideas did find their way into modern computing via Alan Turing. Indeed, during the Second World War, while working at Bletchley Park to decipher German coded messages, Turing discovered a translation of the Menabrea Report with Ada’s notes, explanations and sketches, which he later used as inspiration for his work on the development of modern computing technology.
Unfortunately, Babbage never fully completed the analytical machine, which he spent a lifetime revising. The computer revolution might otherwise have taken place as early as 1843.
In 1991, on the bicentenary of Babbage’s birth, a version of his differential machine, weighing three tonnes, was assembled at the Science Museum in London, after a huge effort (in 2000, a printing mechanism was added). The machine worked amazingly well.
However, no version of the analytical machine has been built to date.
Ada Lovelace used her strong background and knowledge in what we now think of as the various fields of science, arts and humanities to solve difficult problems. As a versatile intellectual, she foresaw things that were far ahead of her time, which is why she has been called by some the Leonardo da Vinci of the wing.
Many scientists need decades of research and numerous published works to make history. Ada Lovelace needed only 52 pages to change the world.
