Semi-Essay on Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace, Enchantress of Numbers
By
Jimmie R. Irwin Jr.
January 16, 2006
Math 106
under
Prof. John Kellermeier
I. Who was this person? Where and when did they live? What was their life like?
Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10th, 1815 in Piccadilly, Middlesex (now in London), England to the English poet George Gordon Noel Byron (Lord Byron) and Anna Isabella Millbanke Byron. Ada had to suffer almost from birth, a dysfunctional family; her parents were married January 2, 1815 but separated on January 16th, 1816 only a month after she was born. On April 25th of that year Lord Byron went abroad never to return again to England. When Lord Byron died in Greece, Ada was eight years old; she had never seen her father in person. Ada’s mother devoted much energy to organizing Ada’s education, but she seems to have spent very little time with her. Ada’s mother, Anne, had been interested in the study of mathematics and considered it a good subject for training the mind and developing discipline. Through various tutors, Ada “…studied math and the sciences to the exclusion of…literature and poetry” (Ortiz, p1). Although Ada was not given much encouragement or time to study literature and poetry, she was permitted to study music for its practical social value. “Music, Lady Byron [Anne] believed, was a topic that provided a girl with the right social skills so this was also emphasised in Ada’s education [sic]” (O’Connor, p1). Despite the misgivings of other members of the extended family that Ada might be driven too hard, “Lady Byron ignored these concerns and kept a constant pressure on her daughter to work hard and long at her lessons” (O’Connor, p2). Some of the pressure took the form of solitary confinement and the requirement to write apology notes for every mistake. Despite this strange upbringing, Ada did show a passion for mathematics and quickly reached the limits of her tutors’ ability with mathematics.
At the age of seventeen, Ada was presented at court and on June 5th of 1833 met Charles Babbage at a party. “Two weeks later Ada and her mother visited Babbage’s London Studio where the Difference Engine was on display. Ada was fascinated and, according to Sophia Frend, William Frend’s daughter and later De Morgan’s wife, wrote that Ada: ‘…young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention.’” (O’Connor, p2) This meeting was to become pivotal in the development of the idea of a stored program for a computer.
At the age of eighteen, Ada met and received tutoring from Mary Somerville--the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mrs. Somerville was also friends with Charles Babbage and had known him for some years. Although they enjoyed attending mathematics and scientific demonstrations together, Mrs. Somerville and Ada also shared a love for music and attended many concerts.
On July 8, 1835 Augusta Ada Byron married William King and went on to have three children, Byron, Annabella, and Ralph Gordon. William King was made Earl in 1838 and Augusta Ada Byron King became Countess of Lovelace. In 1841, Ada Lovelace began advanced study in mathematics under the tutelage of Augustus De Morgan. This is where Ada’s mathematics career really begins to take off. [This thread of the story continues under the answer to yet another question in this project.]
Ada’s life concludes as tragically as it has begun; in the background of her accomplishments her personal life began to fall apart. Her use of alcohol and opiates increased and she gained an addiction to gambling which served to wipe out her entire estate. She finally died of cancer at the age of 36 or 37, ironically about the same age that her father died.
What kind of mathematics did this person do? What did they or others do with their mathematics?
In the year 1843, ten years after first seeing Charles Babbage’s mechanical computers, Ada translated a memoir written by an Italian mathematician on Babbage’s analytic engine. She added extensive notes in the form of seven essays running to forty pages long which became an invaluable set of complex instructions for the operation of the Analytical Engine. But as Ms. Yount points out,
"It was not considered proper for a woman of Lovelace’s class to put her name on a public document, so her work, published in a collection of scientific papers in 1843, was signed only with the initials A.A.L. For 30 years no one knew that she was the author." (Yount, p128)
This work is still important, because it involved an instruction set for the mechanical computer to compute Bernoulli numbers. O’Connor and Robertson quote Charles Babbage on how this came about:
‘Some time after the appearance of [Menabrea's] memoir on the subject in the "Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève," the late Countess of Lovelace informed me that she had translated the memoir of Menabrea. I asked why she had not herself written an original paper on a subject with which she was so intimately acquainted? To this Lady Lovelace replied that the thought had not occurred to her. I then suggested that she should add some notes to Menabrea's memoir; an idea which was immediately adopted.
We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several, but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.
The notes of the Countess of Lovelace extend to about three times the length of the original memoir. Their author has entered fully into almost all the very difficult and abstract questions connected with the subject.
These two memoirs taken together furnish, to those who are capable of understanding the reasoning, a complete demonstration - That the whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery.’
In the annotations, which were called "Notes", Ada Lovelace described how the Analytical Engine could be programmed and gave what many consider to be the first ever computer program (O’Connor, p3).
Ortiz summarizes the significance of this accomplishment in the following way:
Ada concentrated on what today we could call the "software" applications of the Analytical Engine. In this sense, one can call Byron a true visionary, for she was able to foresee that the Babbage's engine could have vast applications in the area of graphics, artificial intelligence, and the composition of complex computer music. All this more than a century before these disciplines were revolutionized by the modern computer! (Ortiz, p2).
It was more than a hundred years later that the concepts and ideas envisioned by Ada finally came to fruition with the advent of the electronic computer age. Ada was very dependant upon Babbage and others for encouragement and if given this encouragement would have gone on to analyze many other mathematical problems and perhaps published many more interesting papers. Unfortunately Babbage himself had become depressed with his lack of success in getting financial support to build his Analytical Engine. The mechanical computer age never came and Ada’s unique contribution was relegated to a footnote in mathematical history.
What else did they do with their life?
Ada’s life came to an ignominious conclusion, but it is worth noting that despite her dysfunctional life as Ortiz writes: “[Ada] Byron’s accomplishments took place during an era that saw women as unfit for scientific pursuits.” (Ortiz, p2). Ada’s husband thought highly of her ‘beautiful mind’ and as O’Connor and Robertson point out:
Her husband wrote:
Her mind was invigorated by the society of the intellectual men whom she entertained as guests. ... She mastered the mathematical side of a question in all its minuteness ... her power of generalisation was indeed most remarkable, coupled as it was with that of minute and intricate analysis. Babbage was a constant intellectual companion and she ever found in him a match for her powerful understanding, their constant philosophical discussions begetting only an increased esteem and mutual liking. [sic] (O’Connor, p4-5).
Why should we know about them?
It is worth knowing about Ada Lovelace because her life shows that whatever limitations one has—and the limitations of the mind can perhaps be the worst—one can still be caught up in the discovery of great ideas and enraptured by the joy of mathematics and its practical applications. Ortiz says it well when he writes:
The field of computer science, and the computer revolution, owes much to the interpretative insight that Ada Byron contributed in her notes to Babbage's Analytical Engine. Like all true visionaries, Byron overcame the limitations of her era, and the results of her work appear everywhere, from the Internet to the concert hall. (Ortiz, p2).
What did you find most interesting about this person?
In the world today you will find a few people who are theoretical geniuses and a few more who are practical geniuses, but rarely do you find a mind who can immediately see the theoretical principle of a thing and then quickly envision the practical applications of such a revolutionary idea. Ada made the intuitive leap when she quickly understood the genius of Babbage’s mechanical computers and she was finally posthumously acknowledged for this vision when the Department of Defense named a programming language after her in 1979. This programming language was ADA.
Bibliography
Ortiz, Edward. SCIENCE HERO: AUGUSTA ADA BYRON.
05/07/2005. 01/16/2006 http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=adabyron
O’Connor, JJ, EF Robertson. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.
August 2002. 01/16/2006
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Lovelace.html
Yount, Lisa. A to Z of Women in Science and Math. New York: Facts on
File, c1999
By
Jimmie R. Irwin Jr.
January 16, 2006
Math 106
under
Prof. John Kellermeier
I. Who was this person? Where and when did they live? What was their life like?
Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10th, 1815 in Piccadilly, Middlesex (now in London), England to the English poet George Gordon Noel Byron (Lord Byron) and Anna Isabella Millbanke Byron. Ada had to suffer almost from birth, a dysfunctional family; her parents were married January 2, 1815 but separated on January 16th, 1816 only a month after she was born. On April 25th of that year Lord Byron went abroad never to return again to England. When Lord Byron died in Greece, Ada was eight years old; she had never seen her father in person. Ada’s mother devoted much energy to organizing Ada’s education, but she seems to have spent very little time with her. Ada’s mother, Anne, had been interested in the study of mathematics and considered it a good subject for training the mind and developing discipline. Through various tutors, Ada “…studied math and the sciences to the exclusion of…literature and poetry” (Ortiz, p1). Although Ada was not given much encouragement or time to study literature and poetry, she was permitted to study music for its practical social value. “Music, Lady Byron [Anne] believed, was a topic that provided a girl with the right social skills so this was also emphasised in Ada’s education [sic]” (O’Connor, p1). Despite the misgivings of other members of the extended family that Ada might be driven too hard, “Lady Byron ignored these concerns and kept a constant pressure on her daughter to work hard and long at her lessons” (O’Connor, p2). Some of the pressure took the form of solitary confinement and the requirement to write apology notes for every mistake. Despite this strange upbringing, Ada did show a passion for mathematics and quickly reached the limits of her tutors’ ability with mathematics.
At the age of seventeen, Ada was presented at court and on June 5th of 1833 met Charles Babbage at a party. “Two weeks later Ada and her mother visited Babbage’s London Studio where the Difference Engine was on display. Ada was fascinated and, according to Sophia Frend, William Frend’s daughter and later De Morgan’s wife, wrote that Ada: ‘…young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention.’” (O’Connor, p2) This meeting was to become pivotal in the development of the idea of a stored program for a computer.
At the age of eighteen, Ada met and received tutoring from Mary Somerville--the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mrs. Somerville was also friends with Charles Babbage and had known him for some years. Although they enjoyed attending mathematics and scientific demonstrations together, Mrs. Somerville and Ada also shared a love for music and attended many concerts.
On July 8, 1835 Augusta Ada Byron married William King and went on to have three children, Byron, Annabella, and Ralph Gordon. William King was made Earl in 1838 and Augusta Ada Byron King became Countess of Lovelace. In 1841, Ada Lovelace began advanced study in mathematics under the tutelage of Augustus De Morgan. This is where Ada’s mathematics career really begins to take off. [This thread of the story continues under the answer to yet another question in this project.]
Ada’s life concludes as tragically as it has begun; in the background of her accomplishments her personal life began to fall apart. Her use of alcohol and opiates increased and she gained an addiction to gambling which served to wipe out her entire estate. She finally died of cancer at the age of 36 or 37, ironically about the same age that her father died.
What kind of mathematics did this person do? What did they or others do with their mathematics?
In the year 1843, ten years after first seeing Charles Babbage’s mechanical computers, Ada translated a memoir written by an Italian mathematician on Babbage’s analytic engine. She added extensive notes in the form of seven essays running to forty pages long which became an invaluable set of complex instructions for the operation of the Analytical Engine. But as Ms. Yount points out,
"It was not considered proper for a woman of Lovelace’s class to put her name on a public document, so her work, published in a collection of scientific papers in 1843, was signed only with the initials A.A.L. For 30 years no one knew that she was the author." (Yount, p128)
This work is still important, because it involved an instruction set for the mechanical computer to compute Bernoulli numbers. O’Connor and Robertson quote Charles Babbage on how this came about:
‘Some time after the appearance of [Menabrea's] memoir on the subject in the "Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève," the late Countess of Lovelace informed me that she had translated the memoir of Menabrea. I asked why she had not herself written an original paper on a subject with which she was so intimately acquainted? To this Lady Lovelace replied that the thought had not occurred to her. I then suggested that she should add some notes to Menabrea's memoir; an idea which was immediately adopted.
We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several, but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.
The notes of the Countess of Lovelace extend to about three times the length of the original memoir. Their author has entered fully into almost all the very difficult and abstract questions connected with the subject.
These two memoirs taken together furnish, to those who are capable of understanding the reasoning, a complete demonstration - That the whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery.’
In the annotations, which were called "Notes", Ada Lovelace described how the Analytical Engine could be programmed and gave what many consider to be the first ever computer program (O’Connor, p3).
Ortiz summarizes the significance of this accomplishment in the following way:
Ada concentrated on what today we could call the "software" applications of the Analytical Engine. In this sense, one can call Byron a true visionary, for she was able to foresee that the Babbage's engine could have vast applications in the area of graphics, artificial intelligence, and the composition of complex computer music. All this more than a century before these disciplines were revolutionized by the modern computer! (Ortiz, p2).
It was more than a hundred years later that the concepts and ideas envisioned by Ada finally came to fruition with the advent of the electronic computer age. Ada was very dependant upon Babbage and others for encouragement and if given this encouragement would have gone on to analyze many other mathematical problems and perhaps published many more interesting papers. Unfortunately Babbage himself had become depressed with his lack of success in getting financial support to build his Analytical Engine. The mechanical computer age never came and Ada’s unique contribution was relegated to a footnote in mathematical history.
What else did they do with their life?
Ada’s life came to an ignominious conclusion, but it is worth noting that despite her dysfunctional life as Ortiz writes: “[Ada] Byron’s accomplishments took place during an era that saw women as unfit for scientific pursuits.” (Ortiz, p2). Ada’s husband thought highly of her ‘beautiful mind’ and as O’Connor and Robertson point out:
Her husband wrote:
Her mind was invigorated by the society of the intellectual men whom she entertained as guests. ... She mastered the mathematical side of a question in all its minuteness ... her power of generalisation was indeed most remarkable, coupled as it was with that of minute and intricate analysis. Babbage was a constant intellectual companion and she ever found in him a match for her powerful understanding, their constant philosophical discussions begetting only an increased esteem and mutual liking. [sic] (O’Connor, p4-5).
Why should we know about them?
It is worth knowing about Ada Lovelace because her life shows that whatever limitations one has—and the limitations of the mind can perhaps be the worst—one can still be caught up in the discovery of great ideas and enraptured by the joy of mathematics and its practical applications. Ortiz says it well when he writes:
The field of computer science, and the computer revolution, owes much to the interpretative insight that Ada Byron contributed in her notes to Babbage's Analytical Engine. Like all true visionaries, Byron overcame the limitations of her era, and the results of her work appear everywhere, from the Internet to the concert hall. (Ortiz, p2).
What did you find most interesting about this person?
In the world today you will find a few people who are theoretical geniuses and a few more who are practical geniuses, but rarely do you find a mind who can immediately see the theoretical principle of a thing and then quickly envision the practical applications of such a revolutionary idea. Ada made the intuitive leap when she quickly understood the genius of Babbage’s mechanical computers and she was finally posthumously acknowledged for this vision when the Department of Defense named a programming language after her in 1979. This programming language was ADA.
Bibliography
Ortiz, Edward. SCIENCE HERO: AUGUSTA ADA BYRON.
05/07/2005. 01/16/2006 http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=adabyron
O’Connor, JJ, EF Robertson. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.
August 2002. 01/16/2006
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Lovelace.html
Yount, Lisa. A to Z of Women in Science and Math. New York: Facts on
File, c1999
posted by Mad Russian the Natural Philosopher | 12:20 AM
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