“This machine can do anything we know how to order it to execute...” That sentence belongs to Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer in history, who wrote and published algorithms for the Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage in 1843. Daughter of the English poet Lord Byron, Ada has received great recognition for her work in the world of computing.
Early Life and Education
Augusta Ada Byron King was born on December 18, 1815, the daughter of the romantic poet Lord George Gordon Byron and Anna Isabella Milbanke Byron. Although she was a legitimate daughter, she had almost no relationship with Lord Byron because he separated from her mother when the girl was about two months old. In 1835, Ada married William King, who at that time was Baron King and later would be named Earl of Lovelace. That is how her married name became Lady Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, whose modern short form is Ada Lovelace. This extraordinary woman grew up, lived, and died—in 1852—in England.
Ada Lovelace is considered the first person to program a machine. It is very possible that her mother's animosity toward Lord Byron, after their paths separated, was largely responsible for the direction Ada's life took. Indeed, her mother began to educate the little girl as far away from literature as possible. Anna Isabella assumed that if she brought her daughter closer to the sciences, she would somehow distance her from her father, and that is how the girl began to study with August Morgan—the first professor of mathematics at the University of London—as her tutor. Through him she met and became friends with Mary Sommerville, a brilliant mathematician, a fact that certainly also influenced her love for logic.
A Life in Intellectual Circles
In 1833, Ada Lovelace was presented to society, so she began to frequent parties, theaters, and other events that young women of her age attended. The England of the first half of the 19th century was a city full of interesting people, and Ada met David Brewster (the British physicist who invented the kaleidoscope), Charles Wheatstone (a physicist famous for his work with electricity), Michael Faraday (inventor of the electric motor, generator, and dynamo), and the writer Charles Dickens.
But the encounter that would change her life took place at a lecture given by an Irish writer and scientist named Dionysus Ladner. At that meeting she was introduced to Charles Babbage, an English mathematician and scientist, who was designing an “analytical machine” capable of being programmed to execute different algorithms and solve any kind of problem, and which operated according to the same logical principles as modern computers.
The Analytical Engine and the First Program
Ada was dazzled by Babbage's mind—some historians insist they were also lovers—and quickly brought herself up to speed on the intricacies of the Analytical Machine, stimulated by the possibilities offered by such a device. For his part, Charles Babbage found in Ada the perfect mathematical support. So impressed was he with her talent that he accepted her as his disciple and, later, his collaborator. As part of her work with Babbage, Ada had to translate and analyze writings by other scientists. The first publication Ada made was a translation of an article written by the Italian mathematician Luigi F. Menabrea (originally in French) about Charles's Analytical Machine, to which Ada added an analysis of its operation.
While carrying out those tasks, she conceived what she would later call “a plan” capable of making the machine devised by Charles be reconfigured to calculate Bernoulli numbers through the use of punch cards. Today that “plan” is considered the first computer program—written about 100 years before the first one was built—which is why Ada Lovelace is considered the first person to describe a general-purpose programming language. Shortly afterward she contributed to computing concepts such as “loop” (a group of instructions that are executed several times) or “subroutine” (a piece of program that can be invoked when needed). She also invented a way to describe algorithms on the Analytical Machine, thus creating the first programming language.
Recognition and Legacy
We must not forget that Ada lived in the Victorian era, when it was very unusual—and even frowned upon—for a woman to be involved in these topics. Babbage himself referred to Ada in his publications as a simple transcriber, thereby downplaying the importance of his friend's contributions. Ada knew that her contributions would not be appreciated until many years later, so she gathered her notes—enriched with inscriptions, demonstrations, and analysis of her research—and published them under the initials “A.A.L.”
In 1843 she wrote an article that included demonstrations of how to calculate trigonometric functions with variables and the necessary programs for the Analytical Machine to run them. This article, published under the title “Notes”, was extended and refined decades later by John von Neumann and Alan Turing.
Ada Lovelace died of cancer on November 27, 1852 at the age of 36. In recognition of her work, there is a programming language that bears her name, based on Pascal and created in 1979 by the U.S. Department of Defense. The “ADA Programming Language” is used mainly in environments where great security and reliability are essential, so it is chosen by defense departments, the aeronautical industry, and the aerospace industry, among others.
For more information, see Ada Lovelace on Wikipedia.
