Ada Lovelace was probably bound for greatness. The product of the brief marriage between Lord Byron (yes, that Lord Byron) and Anne Isabella (“Annabella”) Milbanke, she was born in 1815. But in true Romantic tragedy, her parents separated soon after her birth , and she never knew her father. Her mother, whom Lord Byron called “the Princess of Parallelograms,” was pretty quick with the calculations, and so Lovelace got a good education in math and science. This approach also served to protect Lovelace from the fiery passions of poetry (according to her prudish mother).

Seems Ada got the best of both parents. At age 13, she developed a design for a flying machine — quite a feat in 1828, a full 85 years before and an ocean away from the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. But over time, her approach to mathematics was decidedly verbal. She called herself the poetic scientist, and her writings were imaginative and described in metaphors.

When she was 17 years old, Lovelace met Mary Somerville, the self-taught mathematician and scientist. The two became fast friends, attending lectures, demonstrations and concerts together. And it was Somerville who introduced Lovelace to the man who would help cement her name in history.

Charles Babbage was the inventor of the Difference Engine, a rudimentary calculator that wasn’t built until more than 100 years after his death. He and Lovelace met in 1834, when he was working out the design of his next invention, the Analytic Engine.

Unlike his Difference Engine, this new design was programmable, an idea that completely enthralled Lovelace. She and Babbage became good friends and colleagues, and in 1843, Babbage asked Lovelace to translate into English a French summary of a presentation he gave describing the Analytic Engine. And by the way, could she also expand upon the ideas, since she was so familiar with the design?

What Lovelace wrote was nothing less than prescient:

The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in the Difference Engine. We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

(I said she wrote in metaphors!)

Again Babbage’s machine was not built in his lifetime, but the design — featuring punch cards of the early mechanical computers — is still acknowledged as the precursor to the modern-day computer. And Lovelace is considered the first computer programmer because of what she suggested the machine could do: compute the Bernoulli numbers.

What the heck are they? Well, first off, Bernoulli numbers are a pretty big deal in number theory and analysis. Basically, they’re a sequence (or list) of rational numbers (or decimals that either repeat or terminate). These numbers show up in a variety of places that won’t matter to you. The important thing here is that they are darned difficult to compute. In the 19th century, folks who needed them typically depended on tables that listed these numbers. But Lovelace developed a program that would generate them automatically.

Thus, the first computer program program was born.

Unfortunately for all of us, Lovelace would never see her invention realized. She died of cancer in 1852, before publishing anything more. Still, her contribution is so great that computer geeks around the world still revere her. In 1977, the Department of Defense named its high-level computer programming language Ada. Heck, the IT guy at my last regular job named his first daughter Ada.

I wonder what Lord Byron would have written about his daughter, the poetic scientist?

Had you heard of Ada Lovelace? What do you think Lord Byron would have thought of her contributions? Share your feedback below.

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