March / April 2002 - Working Women

Columns: Herstory

Code Word: Ada
Did you know that the first computer programmer was a gambling addict - and a woman?

by Tony Maxymillian

No stranger to addictions like gambling, drinking and drugs, Ada Byron Lovelace's most significant vice - mathematics - distinguished her as the first computer programmer.

Born in London in 1815, Ada was the daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron, who was as famous for his wild, scandalous behavior as he was for his work. Ada's birth name was Augusta Ada Byron, named after her father's half-sister, who was also his mistress. Ada's mother left Byron a few weeks after Ada's birth and raised Ada alone, pushing her to study mathematics and music, hoping to derail a future as a poet. It worked. Ada developed an obsessive interest in mathematics and actively sought out mathematicians with whom she could exchange ideas.

As author Betty Toole wrote in Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, "Ada anticipated by more than a century most of what we think is brand-new computing." In the 1840s, when Charles Babbage was designing the first programmable computer, Ada documented the fundamental concepts of computer programming, describing some of the main elements needed in any computer language. She also predicted that Babbage's machine could be used for practical, artistic, and scientific use.

At the time, women were banned from attending university or joining scientific societies, but Ada was not deterred from her studies. At age 17, Ada found a role model in Mary Somerville, a well-respected mathematician, who encouraged her study of mathematics and took her to intellectual social events, including lectures at the University of London. Somerville also introduced Ada to her future husband, William King, who would later inherit the title of Earl, making Ada the Countess of Lovelace.

The year before she married King, 1834, Ada discovered the works of Charles Babbage and his plans for an "analytical engine." A calculating machine existed only in theory up to this point, a concept that was grasped by only a few. Ada studied the plans for the machine voraciously, and her ability to grasp the machine's fundamental concepts impressed Babbage.

In 1841, Babbage presented his plans for the analytical engine at a seminar in Italy. An Italian mathematician, Louis Menabrea, published an article based on Babbage's presentation. Two years later, Babbage asked Ada to translate Menabrea's article into English, to which she added her own notes and analysis of Babbage's machine. Ada worked diligently on the translation and her analysis. In a letter to Babbage, she wrote, "I am working very hard for you; like the Devil in fact; (which perhaps I am)."

On the whole, her notes amounted to three times the length of Menabrea's original article and were considered much more significant. They detailed the possibilities of such a machine and the basic principles of computer programming, predicting its eventual use in composing music and constructing graphics. Believing it unfeminine for a woman of her social class to publish such a work, Ada signed her work simply, "A.A.L." Thirty years passed before the identity of A.A.L. was commonly known. By the mid-1840s, Ada's health was collapsing. She suffered a physical, mental, and emotional breakdown brought on by an unhappy marriage and a controlling mother. Her doctors prescribed copious combinations of opium and alcohol. Ada soon became addicted.

Years later, Ada decided to break free of her doctors' "remedies" and managed to kick her habits through self-imposed isolation, but the toll substance abuse had taken on her body was irreversible. Freed from those addictions, Ada found a new one in horse-racing. Her lifetime predilection for calculating numbers led Ada to obsessively concoct theories - often with Babbage's help - to beat the odds. When these theories failed, Ada found herself deeply in debt and facing the new challenge of fighting cancer. She would lose this battle in 1852 at age 36. Though her life was short, Ada's accomplishments live on. In 1979, the U.S. Department of Defense created a new computer programming language christened ADA in honor of Ada Byron Lovelace. Widely used, the language serves a variety of applications, including air-traffic control and flight simulation. ADA, however, is only one example of the boundless results of her prophetic, formidable work.NG

Tony Maxymillian lives and writes in Portland.