Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace Biography

World of Computer Science on Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace

Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace is best known for her early contributions to the field of computing. A friend and devotee of Charles Babbage, she published detailed descriptions of his calculating machines. Byron is credited with having written the world's first computer program, a set of instructions for Babbage's Analytical Engine. She was a visionary who speculated on how calculating machines might someday be put to practical use.

Byron was born in London, December 10, 1815, to an aristocratic family. Named Augusta Ada Byron, she was the only legitimate daughter of George Gordon, Lord Byron, the English poet. Her mother, Lady Byron, was born Anne Isabella Milbanke, a wealthy intellectual and eccentric, who had been tutored in mathematics. According to historians, Lord Byron was unprepared for the commitments of marriage and fatherhood. In the hours before his daughter's birth he threw furniture around the room. When Ada Byron was only a month old, her mother took her and fled from his household. The young Byron never again saw her father, who died of fever when she was eight years old. Byron was raised by her mother, maternal grandparents, and nannies. Her mother was strongly opinionated about child-rearing practices. While she encouraged Byron's formal education, uncommon among the wealthy during the era, she also believed in such practices as teaching young children to lie perfectly still for long periods of time. Byron spent many hours of her childhood lying flat on a wooden plank, forbidden to move even a finger. She was a precocious child, able to add six rows of numbers and spell two-syllable words at the age of five. Her mother decided science and mathematics should be emphasized in her education, believing these disciplines would counter the romanticism and lack of self-control Byron had supposedly inherited from her father. Byron was tutored in science and mathematics by William Frend, a controversial peace advocate, William King, the family's physician, and Mary Somerville, an astronomer and the first female to be elected to Britain's prestigious scientific group, the Royal Society. Byron also studied and excelled in drawing, music, and foreign languages. Her fluency in French would play a role in her contribution to computer history.

In the spring of 1833, Byron attended a party at the home of Charles Babbage, inventor of several steam-driven calculating machines that were to become the precursors of modern computers. Byron quickly took interest in a small working model of Babbage's first Difference Engine, a contraption that could mechanically compete values of quadratic functions. She studied Babbage's plan for the construction of his Analytical Engine, a machine that received instructions and numerical data from punched cards and could make and analyze mathematical calculations. Babbage became a close friend and intellectual mentor to Byron, directing her in 1840 to Augustus de Morgan, a professor of mathematics at the University of London. Under De Morgan's tutelage Byron began advanced studies in mathematics, equivalent to what men were receiving at the time from Cambridge University. De Morgan was reportedly impressed by Byron's intellect, but feared her studies might strain her delicate female nervous system.

The same year that Byron began her advanced studies, Babbage traveled to Turin, Italy, to give a presentation about his Analytical Engine. In attendance was a young military engineer, Luigi Federico Manabrea. Manabrea, who would eventually become prime minister of Italy, was impressed with Babbage's invention, and described its operation for a Swiss journal. His article, written in French, was published in October of 1842. Babbage, who had been so preoccupied with the development and fund-raising for construction of his engines, had never bothered to publish his own descriptions. Charles Wheatstone, pioneer of the telegraph, read Manabrea's article and convinced Byron to translate the article for the British journal Taylor's Scientific Memoirs. Wheatstone was a close family friend and aware of Byron's facility in both French and mathematics. When Byron discovered the original article described only the mathematical concepts by which the engine would work, she decided to append a series of notes to the translation. The notes were remarkable in that she not only produced the first clear mechanical explanation of Babbage's Analytical Engine, but provided illustrations of how it might be instructed to perform particular tasks. In so doing, Byron created the world's first computer program. She invented the idea of asubroutine, a set of instructions that are used repeatedly in a variety of contexts. Byron also anticipated the process she called "backing," which is equivalent to the modern day concept of looping, and she described the notion of a conditional jump, in which the machine responds to "if-then" statements. In her final note, Byron produced a diagram which showed how Bernoulli numbers could be derived through mechanical computation. Her program provided instructions on where to set and how to display calculations in the engine. Byron's eight lengthy notes were written in just under a year, during which time she corresponded heavily with Babbage. In July of 1843 the translation and notes, titled "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, Esq.," appeared in print. Although the publication was to constitute Byron's most important contribution to mathematics, she chose to sign her work with only the initials A.A.L., for Augusta Ada Lovelace. It has been speculated she did so to preserve the image of a modest and proper Victorian lady. Many of her friends knew nothing of her intense interest in mathematics.

While some aspects of Byron's lifestyle did conform to the expectations placed on her by Victorian society, in the end her behavior brought scandal to her family. In 1835 Byron had met and married William King, unrelated to her childhood tutor of the same name. King took a seat in the House of Lords in 1838 and adopted the title first earl of Lovelace. Byron became countess of Lovelace. The couple shared a love of horses and spent considerable time riding on their estates. Their social circle, in addition to Charles Babbage, included physicist Michael Faraday, astronomer Sir John Herschel, and inventor of the kaleidoscope, Sir David Brewster. They were also close friends with Charles Dickens. The couple had three children: Byron, Anne Isabella, and Ralph. In 1837, shortly after giving birth to Anne Isabella, Byron developed cholera. Although she survived, her health never fully recovered. She suffered from asthma and digestive problems, and was prescribed laudanum, opium, and morphine, which she took with wine. Historians believe that Byron was unaware of an addiction, but her personal letters reveal that she experienced the symptoms of withdrawal. She became known for her bizarre mood swings and reportedly had hallucinations. In the decade before her death Byron also took up gambling. An avid fan of horse-racing, she squandered much of the family fortune on a flawed betting scheme. This, and an alleged affair with a gambling accomplice, John Crosse, were the subject of gossip among her social peers. In 1851 Byron was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She died on November 27, 1852, and was laid to rest in a church near Newstead, next to her father, Lord Byron.

In 1953, after digital computing had become a reality, Byron's notes were rediscovered. They appeared in a volume by B.Y. Bowden, titled Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. The computer revolution underway, her contribution to the field would finally receive public recognition. In 1974, the U.S. Defense Department decided to standardize its computer operations by choosing a single computer language for all its tasks. In 1980, on what would have been Byron's 165th birthday, the Ada Joint Program Office was created for the purpose of introducing the Ada language. Three years later, the American National Standards Institute approved Ada as a national all-purpose standard. It was given the code name MIL-STD-1815, the last four digits honoring her birth year.