Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, was one of the most picturesque characters in computer history. Five weeks after Ada was born Lady Byron asked for a separation from Lord Byron, and was awarded sole custody of Ada who she brought up to be a mathematician and scientist.
Lady Byron was terrified that Ada might end up being a poet like her father. Despite Lady Byron's programming Ada did not sublimate her poetical inclinations. She hoped to be "an analyst and a metaphysician". In her 30's she wrote her mother, if you can't give me poetry, can't you give me "poetical science? At the age of 17 Ada was introduced to Mary Somerville , a remarkable woman who translated LaPlace's works into English, and whose texts were used at Cambridge.
Though Mrs. Somerville encouraged Ada in her mathematical studies, she also attempted to put mathematics and technology into an appropriate human context. It was at a dinner party at Mrs.
Somerville's that Ada heard in November, , Babbage's ideas for a new calculating engine, the Analytical Engine.
He conjectured: what if a calculating engine could not only foresee but could act on that foresight. Replete with an arithmetic logic unit, conditional branching and loops, and an integrated memory, the analytical machine meets the criteria for a computationally universal device as outlined by Alan Turing a hundred years later.
In fact, it was so far ahead of its time few could really comprehend its capabilities, and here Lovelace played a crucial role. As part of his efforts to publicise the ideas behind his analytical engine, Babbage gave a seminar at the University of Turin, which was later written up as a paper in French by the young Italian engineer Luigi Menebrea.
Lovelace then translated the paper into English, and expanded on the ideas until her own manuscript, published in , was triple the length of the original.
Among the numerous appendices of her paper she included an algorithm in appendix G for finding Bernoulli numbers , which is widely acclaimed as the first ever computer algorithm. Lovelace impressed many with her talents during her lifetime, despite dying tragically young aged just 36 of uterine cancer. Yet despite her apparent achievements, recognition of her role as one of the founders of modern computing has been controversial.
Many have attributed this reluctance to afford her credit as a symptom of gender prejudices. She intermitted her mathematical studies for marriage and motherhood but resumed when domestic duties allowed. In she published a translation from the French of an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer, Luigi Menabrea, to which Ada added extensive notes of her own. The Notes included the first published description of a stepwise sequence of operations for solving certain mathematical problems and Ada is often referred to as 'the first programmer'.
The collaboration with Babbage was close and biographers debate the extent and originality of Ada's contribution. Perhaps more importantly, the article contained statements by Ada that from a modern perspective are visionary.
She speculated that the Engine 'might act upon other things besides number
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