Page 13 - HISTORY ANGKOR

MINDFUL

MOTHER

LADY BYRON was born Anne Isabel-
la “Annabella” Milbanke on May
17, 1792, the only child of wealthy,
liberal-minded parents in northern
England. Her childhood education
was first rate, and she excelled at
mathematics. During her courtship
with Lord Byron, he referred to her
as the “Princess of Parallelograms.”
Though often publicly regarded as
cold and punishing for stifling her
daughter’s creativity, Lady Byron and
Ada Lovelace appear to have had an
intellectually stimulating relationship
in adulthood, often going to Babbage’s
soirees and scientific exhibitions to-
gether. Lovelace excitedly shared her
translation and notes on the Analyt-
ical Machine with her mother. Lady
Byron was also deeply involved in
many social movements, establish-
ing cooperative schools and providing
aid to those who had escaped slavery.

ANNABELLA BYRON, ADA LOVELACE’S MOTHER,
STIPPLE ENGRAVING, 1833 ALBUM/GRANGER, NYC

Lovelace explained that the machine of Bernoulli numbers—a series of In her work, Lovelace balanced her
would function similarly to the Jac- rational numbers that recur through- mother’s analytical rigor and her father’s

quard loom—an invention that had out mathematics. Her note converted a whimsy. She published detailed, con-
transformed the textile industry in the mathematical calculation into a series crete descriptions of how a hypothetical
19th century. The loom used a series of of instructions that could be executed computer would function while writing
punch cards to partially automate the by the Analytical Engine. With this poetically about the potential of a ma-
mechanical production of woven pat- note, Lovelace had written the first chined future. Her mathematical intellect
terns and images. Rather than a person computer program—for a machine that paired with her creativity allowed her to
manipulating certain threads to create did not even exist, and was known only envision an abstract field that came to
a pattern, the presence or absence of a by description. be known as computing. She called her
punch on the card automatically told the own work “poetical science.”
loom which threads to raise, creating Poetical Science Lovelace died of uterine cancer in
complex designs in a mere fraction of Lovelace’s vision for the device went far 1852 at just 36 years old. She never saw
the time. The cards were a sort of binary beyond just the ability to calculate com- the Analytical Engine completed. In
code, and the Analytical Engine, too, plex equations. In her notes, she argued fact, the machine has never been built.
would run on punch cards. “The Ana- that anything that could be represent- Babbage completed only a small piece of
lytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns ed by numbers—such as musical notes the Analytical Engine before his death in
just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and letters—could also be manipulated 1871. But in 1979—well over 100 years
and leaves,” Lovelace wrote. by such machines. She foresaw an age after Lovelace wrote the first computer
Perhaps the most influential of her in which people worked collaboratively program—a computing language used
notes was titled “Note G.” In this note, with such machines. Her vision for these in transportation and military systems

she wrote a detailed description of how devices went far beyond the ideas of Bab- worldwide was named Ada in her honor.
punch cards could be used in the Ana- bage himself, who believed the machine’s
lytical Engine to output a long sequence usefulness would stop at computation. —Katie Thornton

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 11