Ada Lovelace enjoyed a flutter on the races. Perhaps a little too much as her dwindling finances forced her to secretly pawn the Lovelace family’s diamonds. “Ada, encouraged by con men, would turn her prodigious talents toward gambling and programming the outcomes of horse races,” wrote Julia Markus, in Lady Byron and Her Daughters, who added that a mysterious “book” that passed between Lovelace and Babbage once a week probably contained a program designed to predict horse-race results. [1]
Ada Lovelace was a mathematician and writer who played a pivotal role in the history of computing. She was also the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, a father she never knew.
Ada’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, who was determined to provide her daughter with a rigorous education, introduced her to mathematics from a very young age. Annabella was keen to ensure that Ada did not inherit the erratic and often tumultuous traits of her father.
On 5 June 1833, when Ada was just 17 years old, she attended a party where she met Charles Babbage, a brilliant mathematician and inventor. Babbage was working on a calculating machine and invited Ada to see the prototype of his device. Ada soon recognized the machine’s potential to go beyond mere number-crunching by manipulating symbols and data, effectively describing a precursor to the modern computer.
During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Ada translated an article written by the Italian mathematician, Luigi Federico Menabrea, on Babbage’s second proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. Ada’s notes and annotations, which she added to Menabrea’s work, were groundbreaking.
Explaining the Analytical Engine’s function was a difficult task as many other scientists of the day did not grasp the concept and little interest was shown in it. In her notes, Ada explained how the Analytical Engine could be programmed to perform a wide range of tasks, not just arithmetic calculations. She even developed an algorithm, known as the Ada Lovelace algorithm, to calculate Bernoulli numbers, making it the world’s first published computer program.
Ada Lovelace died at the age of 36 on 27 November 1852 from uterine cancer. She was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, UK.
Today she is world famous. In the 1970s, a computer language ‘ADA’ was named after her and she is rightly called a pioneer of computer science.
Susannah Fullerton: Ada Lovelace & The Analytical Engine
Susannah Fullerton: Lord Byron
Max Planck Institute: Ada Lovelace
Spartus Educational: Annabella Milbanke
Historic UK: Lord Byron
The History Press: Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace
MacTutor: Luigi Federico Menabrea
Computer History Museum: The Engines
AdaCore: About Ada