Ada Lovelace is an unusual and fascinating example of a woman who was a centuryand-a-half ahead of her time. Born in England in 1815, she was the only daughter of Lord Byron the poet and Anabella Milbanke. When Ada was five weeks old her parents separated, and her mother, an amateur mathematician, reared Ada to be a mathematician and scientist, rather than a poet like her father. Luckily for Lovelace, her talents could be nurtured in her aristocratic surroundings. Leading scientists of the day were family friends, and she dined with them regularly. It was at such a friend's dinner party, in 1834, that she first met Charles Babbage. It was also at this dinner party that she heard Babbage discuss his Analytical Engine. He wondered if such a calculating engine could not only foresee an action, but act upon it. This idea was beyond the scope of most listeners, but Lovelace was excited by it. In 1841 Babbage spoke about his Analytical Engine at a seminar in Italy. This was summarised and published in French by Menabrea, an Italian scientist. Now was the time for Ada Lovelace to shine. She translated the article into English, and added her own Notes at Babbage's suggestion, a noble and generous act made in an era when, among the intelligentsia generally, it was believed that the "very great tension of mind" demanded by mathematical problems was beyond a woman's physical capabilities.
This resulted in a much-improved article; three times the original length. The Analytical Engine was not an easy machine to explain to a mid-19th-century audience, involving as it did, ideas about machines and mathematics, the relationship of calculators and, computers, that most people still find confusing more than a century later. Accepting the challenge of writing the notes involved a leap of faith on Lovelace's part. She had to believe the machine was a workable concept and not the absurd invention of a deranged scientist. Her leap of faith involved going against the better judgment of leading British scientists and engineers of the day. Babbage had already designed the Difference Engine, which was really a large calculator, incapable of making decisions. Lovelace was anxious to highlight the difference between this and the Analytical Engine. She selected the Bernoulli numbers to achieve this. Only a machine that could carry out instructions without human intervention and not a mere calculator could calculate Bernoulli numbers. Amazingly, her notes also included predictions that such a machine might also be used to compose complex music and graphics! There is no record of Babbage speculating in this way about his machines.
There has been some scholarly dispute over the technical prowess and scientific abilities of Ada Lovelace. While this argument might diminish our admiration of Ada as a mathematician, it does not diminish her role in publicising the benefits of Babbage's Analytical Machine. When, aged just 17, on first seeing his Difference Engine, a charitable view of her was espoused by Sophia De Morgan, wife of her maths tutor. "Miss Byron, young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention." We know that Ada did not study the elementary mathematics of the Engine until seven years after that initial encounter, and this is merely an example of the mythology surrounding both Ada's mathematical abilities and her role in the development of the Engines. Notwithstanding, Lovelace possessed the scientific understanding and imagination and to grasp and convey the true significance of the Analytical Engine.
Her lack of any great mathematical knowledge or of any specific understanding of the mechanics of the Analytical Engine left her free to speculate about its potential, and this she did in a scientifically imaginative and, not surprisingly, literary fashion. So, Lovelace set to work interpreting the Analytical Engine. When she sent Babbage the first draft, he liked it so much that he did not want to return it for fear she would alter it. Lovelace was describing procedures that had never been imagined before, let alone described: loops and conditional branching, the manipulation of symbols rather than just numbers. Apart from some minor disagreements Lovelace had with Babbage concerning his sloppy work habits or unwelcome interventions, they had one major row concerning the publication of her Notes. Babbage had written a statement criticising the way the government had handled the development of his engines and he wanted it published as an unsigned preface to the Notes. When this was not possible, Babbage asked Lovelace to withdraw her work. She saw this as a betrayal and fought vigorously to ensure publication of her work. Babbage lost this fight and his "statement" appeared anonymously in the Philosophical Magazine a month later. The main question this incident raises is Babbage's true motive for collaborating with Lovelace in the first place. Was it because he needed the publicity of her famous name, and not because he perceived in her any special talent? This brings us back to the question of the popular myth of Ada's genius.
Bruce Collier, an esteemed historian of Babbage, has been forthright in his views on this subject. "It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that Babbage wrote the notes to Menabrea's paper, but for reasons of his own encouraged the illusion in the minds of Lovelace and the public that they were authored by her."
Dorothy Stein's biography of Lovelace also addresses the "overrated" question, and also concludes that Lovelace probably did not have the mathematical knowledge to write the Menebrea papers without Babbage's help. Stein noted that Ada translated a printer's error in the original French edition of Menebrea's paper, which resulted in an incorrect formula, but then Babbage also missed it in the proof reading. However, Lovelace's Notes synthesised Babbage's ideas in such a way that leading scientists would realise the value of his revolutionary invention. They formedthe most substantial account of the Analytical Engine during his lifetime. While the conception and major work on the Analytical Engine were completed before Ada was even introduced to its elementary principles, her role as interpreter and publicist were invaluable in their foresight, as well as in their revelations of contemporary thinking about automatic computing machines.