Augusta Ada Byron, known to most by her married name, Ada Lovelace, she was a British mathematician, but above all the first computer programmer in history. Lovelace in fact wrote the first algorithm intended to be developed by Charles Babbage’s analytical engine which we can consider the “ancestor” of modern computers.
An extremely brilliant and lively mind, she is considered a pioneer in the field of information technology, where she had seen things right from the start: Ada, in fact, compared to scholars of her peers and to Babbage himself, had already foreseen that computers would go far beyond of numerical calculations.
Since 2009 it has been celebrated every second Tuesday of October International Ada Lovelace Daya date chosen to commemorate achievements in STEM disciplines by women.
The childhood of mathematician Augusta Ada Byron, the first female programmer
Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelacebetter known as Ada Lovelacewas born on 10 December 1815 in London, from mathematics Anne Isabella Milbanke and by the famous poet Lord Byron. However, she never met her father, because he abandoned England when the little girl was not even a year old due to a series of social and economic scandals.
The separation was endured with moderation, however, because her mother – who wanted the best possible scientific education for her to “prevent her from ending up like her father” – hired the Scottish astronomer as a private teacher. Mary Somervillewhich made her immediately passionate about mathematical sciences. But not only that: to keep her daughter’s curiosity alive, her mother took her with her during many of her trips to the most industrialized cities of the country, explaining to her the functioning of cutting-edge machinery such as the mechanical loom invented by Joseph Marie Jacquardwhich worked thanks to punched cards. Again thanks to her mother, a woman well known in the scientific world, Ada met many important scientists (including Michael Faraday) and prominent literary figures such as Charles Dickens.
At 18, during a high society party, he met the mathematician Charles Babbagewho enchanted her by talking to her about his plans and ideas. That man had in fact invented a differential machine capable of performing reliable calculations (computing tables of numerical functions through the method of differences) by turning numbered wheels using a special crank. Ada still didn’t know that that meeting would change her life, because it would start a working collaboration that would last many years. A few days later he went to his home to observe the incomplete prototype, and began to study
The second meeting that changed her life happened shortly after, in 1835, when she met the Earl of Lovelace William King-Noel, whom she married and took his surname. Just shortly after the wedding, however, Ada’s health began to deteriorate, showing respiratory and digestive problems that she treated with opiate medicines that sometimes made her delirious and took her away from her studies.
The Inventions of Ada Lovelace: The Computer Algorithm for Babbage’s Machine
Meanwhile, Lovelace managed to get published in the magazine Scientific Memoirswho in 1843 had asked her to translate an article written by the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea on Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Ada not only translated it, but also added many personal notes that suggested ideas about how the machine worked. Furthermore, he made a comparison with the Jacquard loom seen in his youth, that he could draw patterns automatically using punched cards, just as Babbage’s machine “weaved algebraic patterns.”
His intuition started precisely from that comparison, and it is thecomputer algorithm to calculate the Bernoulli numbers (an infinite series of digits used in various mathematical analysis applications) using Babbage’s machine.
In this sense, Ada described in detail how the machine would manipulate the data to calculate the Bernoulli numbers, using a mathematical and schematic language. The instructions included the sequence of operations that the machine would then perform, anticipating the concept of sequential programming.
We can therefore safely say that if Babbage is the inventor of hardware (the first computer), Lovelace is the inventor of the software (the first program). But Ada was a true visionary and she didn’t stop there: she understood that Babbage’s invention could even manipulate symbols (such as letters or musical notes) if encoded appropriately.
Lovelace in fact realized that the analytical engine could be used for compose music. In fact, if the musical notes had been translated into mathematical rules, the machine could have automatically generated musical pieces.
Babbage’s misfortune and Ada’s premature death
Like many misunderstood geniuses, Babbage died in poverty after trying hard – and unsuccessfully – to convince the British government to finance the construction of his machine, which undoubtedly would have changed the world long before.
Precisely because the machine was not built, Lovelace’s algorithm was never officially tested and therefore not even proven. A hundred years later, however, the American engineer Howard Aiken designed an electromagnetic computer based partly on Babbage’s design. That invention did not come to naught, however, but was financed by IBM and built in 1944 under the name Harvard Mark I.
Ada Lovelace, tormented by this fact and by health problems, did not fare any better: addicted to opiate drugs and profoundly depressed, she squandered part of her assets, separated from her husband and he died on November 27, 1852 following numerous bloodlettings in an attempt to cure uterine cancer, the latest illness that had struck her.
