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The Countess of Lovelace: Ada Byron King
by Margaret Etherton

Long ago, in a time before computers, a young woman created the very first computer program. She did not go to school, but was taught by her mother at home. As women were not allowed to attend universities, she could not go. Yet this brilliant woman is considered by many people to be one of the pioneers of the computer industry. She predicted the scientific and practical tasks that a modern computer can do, like creating drawings and composing music. However, it was difficult to have her ideas published under her own name. Who was she? How was this possible? How did she achieve so much against such odds?

Ada Byron was born in England in 1815 at a time of many exciting discoveries. But it was also a time when few women could have a proper education. She was the first and only child of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron, a very famous romantic poet. Her father was a strange character; people said that he was "mad, bad and dangerous to know." Annabella was so worried that Ada might become a poet like her father that she made sure that her daughter only studied scientific subjects.

Ada's mother began tutoring her at the age of five. Ada loved math, dancing, gymnastics, riding horses, and playing the harp. Her mother rewarded Ada with "tickets" for doing her lessons well. If she did not perform as well as her mother expected, she lost her reward tickets and was sometimes even punished.

As a child, Ada wanted to fly. Since she loved figuring out how mechanical things worked, Ada designed a flying machine. By studying the anatomy of birds, she learned that the wings had to be proportional to the body. Through her research, she chose the best materials and constructed wings. She even thought of adding steam to power her flying machine. Ada was only 12!

As Ada grew older, she studied at home and attended public lectures. When she was 17, Ada heard about Charles Babbage, an English mathematician and inventor. Two years later when she met Babbage, she was able to talk to him about his mathematical ideas. She was one of the few people of the time who could understand his work.

Charles Babbage was compulsive about counting and measuring, but he was lazy. He wanted to create a machine to do the counting and measuring for him. He asked the government for money to make a Difference Engine, a giant calculating machine made of brass and steel clockwork. Next, he planned a steam powered calculating machine, called an Analytical Engine, which was supposed to calculate up to 50 decimal points and could store up to 1,000 numbers. He created plans to store instructions on punched cards like the ones used in weaving machines. Because the technology of the day was not advanced enough, his machines did not get built, but stayed ideas on paper.

When Ada was 20, she married William King, Lord Lovelace. That is why Ada is also called the Countess of Lovelace. She continued studying while raising three children and through much sickness in her life.

When she was 25 she wrote out the instructions for the board game, Solitaire. She numbered each peg and described every move. This was the first computer program, even though computers had not been created.

About three years later her notes, Observations on Mr. Babbage's Analytical Engine were published. In it, Ada described how the Analytical Engine was capable of following instructions. Included in her comments were her ideas that a machine like this could be used to compose music and to produce pictures. She was right. The modern computer can do many scientific and practical jobs that she suggested, but that others did not foresee. Unfortunately, she could not put her name to the booklet. If people knew a woman had written it, they would have scoffed at her ideas.

Never in very good health, Ada the Countess of Lovelace fell ill and died when she was only 37 years old. The daughter of a mad poet, she was a brilliant mathematician and a woman far ahead of her time. Though it would be nearly one hundred and forty years later, she was eventually recognized for her cleverness in 1980, when a computer language was named "Ada" in her honour.

References

Burton, Kaye and Karen Le Rossignol. Communicating in an IT Environment. Victoria, Australia: Tertiary Press, 2001.
Moore, Doris Langley. Ada: Countess of Lovelace. London: John Murray, 1977.
Toole, Betty A. Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers. Mill Valley, CA: Strawberry Press, 1992.

Internet references:

http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ifi/ps/AdaBasis/pal_1195/ada/ajpo/pol-hist/history/lady-lov.txt
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/ada-bio.html
http://www.well.com/user/adatoole/bio.htm#timeline

Margaret Etherton is a teacher, tutor, and writer. She has taught a range of subjects, such as reading, writing, mathematics, and computers to people of all ages—from small kids to seniors! Margaret lives close to the beach in Sydney with her husband, two of her four children, and her cat. Currently she is working on resources for teachers, teaching computers to adults, and writing syllabus documents for Australian colleges.

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