Page 11 - HISTORY ANGKOR

LEARNING
TO FLY

LOVELACE COMBINED her moth-
er’s mathematical rigor with her
father’s imagination. When she
was 12 years old, she decided
(as many children do) that she
wanted to fly, but unlike other
children whose attempts may
have been limited to jump-
ing off chairs, she took a more
scientific approach. She stud-
ied birds, assessed materials
for their likelihood to enable
flight, and considered how to
construct wings. In this era be-
fore widespread electricity, she
even drew up plans for a steam-
powered flying machine. Young
Ada Lovelace wrote and illus-
trated a guide on how she may
best be able to achieve flight
and called it “Flyology.”

ADA LOVELACE, ABOUT AGE 20,
IN A PORTRAIT FROM 1835
IAN DAGNALL COMPUTING/ALAMY

unchecked imagination could bring out less than five weeks after Ada’s birth, for mathematics proved enduring. By
the influence of Ada’s absentee father, Annabella quietly gathered the baby the time Ada entered her late teens, her
the poet George Gordon Byron, better and left for her parents’ country home, mother noted (with wry pride) that she
known to the world as Lord Byron. De- moving them away from Byron and his was more interested in talking to scien-
scribed by one of his mistresses as “mad, influence. Within a matter of months, tists and mathematicians than potential
bad, and dangerous to know,” Lord Byron Lord Byron had left England for good. suitors from England’s elite. In 1835 Ada
was famous for his wordsmithery and Ada, Bryon’s only child born in wedlock, married William King, a member of the
infamous for his licentious and tortured never knew her father. He died when Ada English nobility. He soon became the Earl
public life. As a Romantic-era celebrity, was eight years old. of Lovelace, giving Ada the title Count-
his addiction and mental health struggles ess of Lovelace. The two shared a love
were visible for all to see. Intellectual Equals of horses—and her husband appears to
Annabella and he were briefly mar- Lady Byron, fearful that Ada would in- have supported Ada’s intellect and thirst

ried, but when Ada was born, Byron was herit her father’s self-destructive ten- for knowledge.
reportedly quite angry about the sex of dencies, nurtured her daughter’s ana- Perhaps Ada’s most fruitful relationship
the child. On a January morning in 1816, lytical side, and Ada’s childhood passion was her lifelong friendship with Charles

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 9