8 MARCH/APRIL 2022PROFILESAda 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.O
n a summer Monday eve-
ning in 1833, Ada Byron
and her mother Anne
Isabella “Annabella”
Byron went to the home of
English mathematician Charles Babbage.
Twelve days earlier, when the younger By-
ron met Babbage at a high society soiree,
she had been taken with his description
of a machine he was building.
The hand-cranked apparatus of bronze
and steel used stacks of cogs, hammer-like
metal arms, and thousands of numbered
wheels to automatically solve mathemat-
ical equations. But the Difference Engine,
as Babbage called it, was incomplete. He
had finished a small prototype that stood
about two-and-a-half feet tall. The clang-
ing, whirring showpiece was able to spit
out answers to challenging mathematical
equations. Babbage believed the complete
product had the potential to solve much
more complex problems. The Difference
Engine’s demonstration piece set Lon-
don’s intel-
lectual circles
and scientific
community
alight, wow-
ing the likes
of CharlesDarwin and Charles Dickens. Its per-
formance was near miraculous, even to
London’s greatest intellects—an almost
sorcerous parlor trick for Babbage.
While the Difference Engine wasn’t
magical to 17-year-old Ada Byron, it was
transformative. Upon seeing the machine
on that fateful evening in 1833, she under-
stood how it worked. In Ada, 41-year-old
Babbage found his intellectual equal, and
over the course of the next two decades,
Ada would prove that her understanding
and vision for such machines went far
beyond mere calculation.An Analytical Childhood
Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada
Byron on December 10, 1815, into Vic-
torian English high society. Her mother,
Annabella Byron, was one of the few
women of her generation to be afforded
an education. She passed her love of
knowledge—and mathematics in partic-
ular—on to her daughter, hiring famous
mathematicians to tutor young Ada and
instructing Ada herself when she could
not find a suitable tutor.
It wasn’t just the selfless pursuit of
knowledge that led Annabella to ensure
her daughter had the best education.
Annabella was worried that too muchWords
and
Numbers1842-
Commenting on a
paper on Babbage’s
Analytical Engine,
Ada pens the first
computer program.1835
Ada marries William,
the eighth Baron
King, who will
become the first Earl
of Lovelace.1816
Ada’s parents’ marriage is
dissolved. Her childhood
will be spent in England.
When she is eight, her
father will die in Greece.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.CALCULATING MACHINE, KNOWN AS THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE, DESIGNED BY
CHARLES BABBAGE, 19TH-CENTURY HAND-COLORED WOODCUTBy her late teens, Lovelace was more
interested in talking to scientists
and mathematicians than suitors.NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMYAfter a rigorous
education, Ada’s gift for
mathematics emerges.
She meets inventor
Charles Babbage.1833