Page 10 - HISTORY ANGKOR

P R O F I L E S
Ada Lovelace,
Programming Pioneer
Born to a mathematician and a Romantic poet, Ada Lovelace combined her parents’
gifts into her own unique vision of a future world where computing could be king.
Words
and
Numbers
1815
Ada is born. Her father, the
English poet Lord Byron,
will abandon the family one
month later and never see
her or her mother again.
1816
Ada’s parents’ marriage is
dissolved. Her childhood
will be spent in England.
When she is eight, her
father will die in Greece.
1833
After a rigorous
education, Ada’s gift for
mathematics emerges.
She meets inventor
Charles Babbage.
1835
Ada marries William,
the eighth Baron
King, who will
become the first Earl
of Lovelace.
1842-43
Commenting on a
paper on Babbage’s
Analytical Engine,
Ada pens the first
computer program.
8 MARCH/APRIL 2022
n a summer Monday eve- Darwin and Charles Dickens. Its per-
ning in 1833, Ada Byron formance was near miraculous, even to
and her mother Anne London’s greatest intellects—an almost
Isabella “Annabella” sorcerous parlor trick for Babbage.
OByron went to the home of While the Difference Engine wasn’t
English mathematician Charles Babbage. magical to 17-year-old Ada Byron, it was
Twelve days earlier, when the younger By- transformative. Upon seeing the machine
ron met Babbage at a high society soiree, on that fateful evening in 1833, she under-
she had been taken with his description stood how it worked. In Ada, 41-year-old
of a machine he was building. Babbage found his intellectual equal, and
The hand-cranked apparatus of bronze over the course of the next two decades,
and steel used stacks of cogs, hammer-like Ada would prove that her understanding
metal arms, and thousands of numbered and vision for such machines went far
wheels to automatically solve mathemat- beyond mere calculation.
ical equations. But the Difference Engine,
as Babbage called it, was incomplete. He An Analytical Childhood
had finished a small prototype that stood Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada
about two-and-a-half feet tall. The clang- Byron on December 10, 1815, into Vic-
ing, whirring showpiece was able to spit torian English high society. Her mother,
out answers to challenging mathematical Annabella Byron, was one of the few
equations. Babbage believed the complete women of her generation to be afforded
product had the potential to solve much an education. She passed her love of
more complex problems. The Difference knowledge—and mathematics in partic-
Engine’s demonstration piece set Lon- ular—on to her daughter, hiring famous
don’s intel- mathematicians to tutor young Ada and
lectual circles instructing Ada herself when she could
and scientific not find a suitable tutor.
community It wasn’t just the selfless pursuit of
alight, wow- knowledge that led Annabella to ensure
ing the likes her daughter had the best education.
of Charles Annabella was worried that too much
By her late teens, Lovelace was more
interested in talking to scientists
and mathematicians than suitors.
CALCULATING MACHINE, KNOWN AS THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE, DESIGNED BY
CHARLES BABBAGE, 19TH-CENTURY HAND-COLORED WOODCUT
NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY