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Ada Lovelace: First Computer Programmer
- 1. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ Ada Lovelace Anne Quinney and Debbie Holley International Womens Day March 2019
- 2. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 2 Question……?? • Who do you associate with the history of computers and computing? • What era are they from?
- 3. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 3 Women in computing
- 4. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 4 Ada Lovelace 1815 -1852 “the enchantress of numbers” and “poetical scientist”.
- 5. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 5 Arts and Science heritage • Augusta Ada Byron was born in 1815, the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron, with his wife Anne Isabella Byron. Byron referred to his wife as the ‘princess of parallelograms’. • Brought up by her intellectual and religious mother and her parents, after the marriage swiftly broke down her father left to travel in Europe when she was a few months old. • She was educated in science and mathematics in an attempt to counteract the poetic traits of her absent father. • In 1835, aged 19, she married William King, 8th Baron King. In 1838, her husband became Earl of Lovelace and Ida became the Countess of Lovelace.
- 6. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 6 Science, mathematics and engineering An unusual mix of interests for an aristocratic woman at that time. However, their position in society Gave them access to many influential and learned people. Ida and her mother visited factories to learn how mechanical machines worked. She became firm friends with, and corresponded with, Mary Somerville a renowned mathematician and scientist, on higher level mathematics problems.
- 7. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 7 Collaborations with Charles Babbage • Introduced at a party Babbage shared his ideas about his theoretical ‘difference engine’, later to develop into the ‘analytic engine’. • Ida translated a paper about Babbage’s analytic engine from French and created a commentary on it developing the ideas significantly. This was later published. • Her paper included the world’s first published computer programme, or algorithm –the Bernoulli number algorithm.
- 8. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 8 Creative possibilities beyond numbers and calculations Ada understood that “the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves” In 1843 she wrote that “it might compose…pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”
- 9. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 9 A short but influential life • Ida died at the age of 36 – the same age that her father had died – in1852, from uterine cancer. She was buried, at her request, next to her father near his ancestral home at Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire • In 1993 a blue plaque was erected at her home in St James’s Square, London, to commemorate her being a ‘pioneer of the computer’.
- 10. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 10 Her legacy • The understanding of the limits of computingwas acknowledged by Alan Turing as Lady Lovelace’s Objection: ‘The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis, but it has no power of anticipating any analytical revelations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with’ (Ada Lovelace 1843). • In 1980, the US Department of Defence named a computer language after her, ‘ADA’. • Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated on October 11th.
- 11. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 11 Further resources • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBbVbqRvqTM • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZptxisyVqQ • https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/ada-lovelace-day- first-computer-programmer-forgotten-women-a8557416.html • https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/ • https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/adalovelace/about-ada-lovelace/ • https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/24/ada-lovelace-first- edition-pioneering-algorithm-program • https://www.city.ac.uk/news/2019/january/city-academics-talk-about- women-in-stem • https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about- ada-lovelace
- 12. https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/ 12 See also Lewis JS. 1995. Princess of parallelograms and her daughter: Math and gender in the nineteenth century English aristocracy. Women’s Studies International Forum. Vol 18(4) pp387-394 Images from https://www.famousscientists.org/ada- lovelace/
Editor's Notes
- The difference machine
- You might be able to think of men – Babbage (1791-1871)), and more recently Tim Berners-Lee and http/world wide web, Bill Gates and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and apple computers, Alan Turing and the Enigma code and his many female colleagues at Bletchley Park …there might be a clue in the name of the woman we have chosen to talk to you about…. Until today …. Had you heard of….did you know about ……Ada Lovelace??
- Women used to be employed in programming as it was considered a skill needing dexterity - similar to knitting. It was consequently not well paid Image 1. similar to later images of the ‘typing pool’ Image 2. Women at Bletchley Park.
- Portrait by Alfred Edward Chalon, 1840 Arguably the most significant woman in computing was Ida, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron the poet. Babbage referred to her as ‘the enchantress of numbers’.
- Ada was a bright and curious child, and from her early years experimented with mechanical things. Her mother had been schooled by a Cambridge professor and excelled at mathematics. Her father has famously been described by his peers as’ ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, one of the most famous British poets, from the Romantic tradition. Facing mounting pressure as a result of his failed marriage, scandalous affairs and huge debts, Byron left England in April 1816 and never returned. He spent the summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary and Mary's half sister Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron had a daughter. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley– a local connection, author of Frankenstein and daughter of the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. (one of BU Lecture Theatres is named after her). Ida described her approach as ‘poetical science’ and herself as an ‘Analyst (& Metaphysician)’.
- Mary Somerville – Somerville College Oxford named after her.
- Ada Lovelace embodied many of her father's rebellious qualities. She is also considered to have been the world's first computer programmer, having written the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine—Charles Babbage's analytical engine. the world’s first programmable computer. It featured an arithmetic logic portion, control flow by loops and conditional branching, and separate memory – and all of this to be built using mechanical parts and powered by hand-cranking or steam! In her paper, she included the world’s first published computer program, or algorithm – this was the Bernoulli number algorithm – and hence she is often cited as the world’s first computer programmer. It would be fair to say, though, that Babbage contributed much of this section – precisely how much is the subject of academic debate. 1st edition was sold for £95,000 in2018 Ada Lovelace. 1843 Translation of Menabrea’s Sketch of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.
- Ada Lovelace broke new ground in computing, identifying an entirely new concept. She realized that an analytical engine could go beyond numbers. This was the first ever perception of a modern computer – not just a calculator – but a machine that could contribute to other areas of human endeavor, for example composing music. Ada Lovelace had grasped that anything that could be converted into numbers, such as music, or the alphabet (language) or images, could then be manipulated by computer algorithms. An analytical engine had the potential to revolutionize the way the whole world worked, not just the world of mathematics. In 1991, Doron Swade, Curator of Computing at London’s Science Museum, had a ‘difference engine’ built using Babbage’s design. It weighed 5 tons and worked perfectly.
- The figure of Ada Lovelace was rescued from oblivion when, after the first third of the twentieth century, the work of Alan Turing merged mathematical logic with universal computing. Turing himself gave the name Lady Lovelace’s Objection to his maxim that Artificial Intelligence cannot generate anything. An image of Ada Lovelace appeared in all certificates of authenticity for Windows 95, and today there are different initiatives bearing her name celebrating the advancement of women in the fields of mathematics, science and technology, including Ada Lovelace Day (October 11).