you might have assumed that the computer
age began with some geeks out in
California or perhaps with the
codebreakers of World War two
[Music]
but the Pioneer who first saw the true
power of the computer lived way back
during the transformative age of the
Industrial Revolution
as Queen Victoria takes to the throne in
the early 19th century Britain is on the
brink of an even more ambitious
revolution the mechanization of thought
itself forged from brass and powered by
steam a Victorian computer age
it took extraordinary foresight and yet
in this patriarchal world this visionary
wasn't a man passionate and intelligent
lady Aidan Lovelace
[Music]
I'm Hannah fry as a mathematician I want
to find out how this 19th century lady
prophesized the information age how she
published the first computer program as
long ago as 1843 and how she nearly
brought about a Victorian computer
revolution
I want to rediscover the story of Ada
Lovelace the woman who dared to dream of
a world of computers and to uncover her
role in a remarkable vision of the
future to find out how this Victorian
lady could have foreseen the power of
computers I've come here pawsley towers
a day's ride from London and her home
for most of her adult life ada had a
very privileged background in fact she
was almost one of Queen Victoria's
ladies-in-waiting
so it was no surprise when she was
married off to Lord King soon to become
the Earl of Lovelace a man who was ten
years her senior and as practical as ADA
was imaginative
Dickens Faraday and the inventor Charles
Babbage were just some of their close
acquaintances it was a magical exciting
time
two opposing cultures science and
romanticism were colliding my heroine
thrived at the crossroads of both
[Music]
she roped her dream of a computerized
world in this Taylor's scientific
memoirs now this isn't just any old book
this is one of the most visionary
documents in the history of science a 65
page blueprint for a computer revolution
it has complex mathematics it has the
layout for the world's first
general-purpose computing machine even
has the world's first published computer
programs and in it ADA suggests a
machine made from cogs and cans and
steam and oil could compose music in
effect its ADA's camana Festo for a
computer age and all of this as far back
as 1843
this document is a fascinating mix of
science and imagination so how did she
manage to embrace both strands logic and
the creative arms
it seemed to me that there was one man
at the epicenter of everything Aidid it
he had a huge influence on her
upbringing and was the biggest celebrity
in Britain at the time Lord Byron poet
philanderer romantic and ADA's father
[Music]
ADA was his only legitimate daughter and
he loomed large throughout her life and
yet he left her when she was just a five
week old baby and he never saw her again
her mother made quite sure of that
[Music]
Annabella Milbank and Lord Byron married
in 1815 yet were poles apart Annabella
was mathematical and stiflingly
conformist
Byron was free-spirited and cared little
for numbers
[Music]
I'm a scandalous Lord Byron as well as
producing some of the most important
written works of the 19th century was
famous for drinking out of a human skull
having a pet bear and numerous affairs
with both men and women now one spurned
lover female famously put it that he was
mad bad and dangerous to know Annabella
and Byron's marriage lasted for a very
long year before it eventually broke up
acrimoniously she kicked him out covered
his painting with a big curtain and
forbade ADA for ever looking at it which
must have been torturous for someone
with as inquisitive or mind as ADA had
Annabella loathed her estranged husband
and went about purging the young girl of
any evidence of her father's personality
volatile poetic insanity she called it
so she was looking for ways to try and
protect ADA
[Music]
Anabella decided to force-feed the child
on a diet of maths and science with a
zeal bordering on fanaticism even though
the subjects was seen as the preserve of
the male mind
[Music]
Augustus de Morgan was ADA's main tutor
and a brilliant mathematician in his own
right he founded the math department at
UCL which is the university that I work
at but it wasn't exactly progressive in
a letter that he wrote to ADA's mother
he explains why women are best to avoid
doing hard maths the reason is obvious
he writes the very great tension of mind
which they require is beyond the
strength of a woman's physical power of
application it does recognize ADA's
hearts though at least in a slightly
backhanded compliment lady L has
unquestionably as much power as would
require all the strength of a man's
Constitution she studied voraciously at
just 13 she became fascinated by flight
and designed a mechanical bird that
could flap its wings
[Music]
she was developing skills that were
coveted in the Victorian age of
engineering inventiveness and scientific
rigor and by the young age of 17 she was
ready to show them off the stage her
mother chose was one of the most
sought-after soirees of the day hosted
by the famous inventor Charles Babbage
and attended by the Great and the good a
guest wrote at the time one of three
qualifications were necessary for those
who sought to be invited intellect
beauty or rank
the young lady Lovelace had all three
at the party Babbage was keen to unveil
a new creation to his select audience
[Music]
he called it the difference engine the
most ambitious mechanical calculator
ever designed
[Music]
it's mathematical elegance impressed the
young ADA
and this is the actual machine that ADA
would have seen at Babbage's just a
small sample of what it could have been
had it been built fully but enough to
understand how it worked and enough to
spark her imagination and maybe
somewhere on there still is a couple of
ADA's fingerprints left over the machine
would do the work of a whole army of
mathematicians a body of men who were
actually known as computers this was
just one seventh of an entire difference
engine the full version constructed from
Babbage's plans can be seen at the
London Science Museum so loose
floorboard
it's lovingly tended by curator Tilly
blind though for the first time I ever
see it why should i over standing I
think it's nice to stand in the front so
you can see the whole machine working in
harmony and have a real sense of it okay
but it's also beautiful from the back as
well okay I'm genuine the exact about
though so you got the units at the
bottom and then going up tens and
hundreds right that's right
so every time you go past nine you have
to carry up the column Wow actually that
is incredible
must've seems like mechanizing thought
itself right yeah they called it the
thinking machine so what does the
machine actually do Tilly so the really
incredible thing about this machine is
it works using purely addition it works
using something called the method of
finite differences so this allows you to
take any equation and work that through
using an approximation but using only
addition so in a way I suppose this
machine takes an equation breaks it down
to smaller smaller smaller and smaller
pieces until you end up with something
so simple it can be done by the turning
of a cog yeah each one of those cogs is
just doing addition to the next adding
adding adding exactly the method allows
simultaneous work on a multitude of
simple sums tricky for the human brain
to keep track of but perfect for the
methodical workings of a machine when
each addition passes through ten these
hypnotic spirals carry the one up the
column at the end the difference engine
automatically prints the answers into
tables removing the risk of human error
why was it important so in the 19th
century people were using mathematical
tables for all sorts of things they were
using them for engineering they were
using them for astronomy but probably
most importantly they were using these
tables for navigation so sailors
referring to these mathematical tables
and if there were errors in them then
lives could be lost
people could be sailing into the wrong
places it's an ingenious machine
but this was not a computer rather it
was an incredibly advanced calculator
precise up to 31 decimal places can you
do it one more time okay I'm gonna stay
on this side this sides gorgeous at the
time ADA saw the difference engine it
was just the small demonstration piece
[Music]
for many of the guests that night it was
an amusing curiosity but not for her the
debutante grasped its significance
wife of ADA's Tudor mrs. de Morgan wrote
of the night when most of the guests
looked on with the expression the
savages show on seeing a looking-glass
miss Byron young as she was understood
it's working and saw the great beauty of
the invention it was enough to ignite
sparks between Babbage and ADA not
sexual sparks but intellectual ones and
the beginning of a lifelong friendship
an ADA's excitement almost certainly
gave Babbage extra vigor to push forward
with his audacious plans
to build such a technologically advanced
machine would need state-of-the-art
manufacturing the best engineer was
hired to mill each of the 25,000 parts
to exacting tolerances it wasn't going
to come cheap
[Music]
but if there was ever an era for
extraordinary projects Babbage and
Lovelace were in it
Brunel was engineering the Great Eastern
steamship Wheatstone had proposed the
world's first telegraph system
Darwin was transforming our
understanding of how he had evolved and
Faraday Babbage's close friend was
revealing the secrets of electricity
Britain's celebrated inventiveness but
all of a sudden Babbage shelved his idea
of a grand mechanical calculator
here at Royal Holloway engineer Doron
Swade thinks he knows the reason for
Babbage's change of heart
why did Babbage drop the idea of the
difference engine then the simple answer
had a better idea but the circumstances
are rather curious he had a dispute
which was unresolved with his engineer
Joseph Clement and by law in those days
the engineer or the the tool maker owned
the drawings the drawings belong to him
so Babbage could not recover the
drawings so there was an enforced gap in
his progression of his different engine
designs he was left without the drawings
he couldn't work on them without his
drawings he then began to go back to the
first principles and say well what was
he trying to do here and in the course
of those reflections he had the second
idea which is an engine that were fast
least superseded in aspiration and
capability and that was the analytical
engine
[Music]
Babbage's new idea was audacious the
most complicated machine ever conceived
he called it the analytical engine and
it would define ADA's legacy so I've had
a little look at the plans then let's go
into him and the first thing that really
strikes you especially in comparison to
the difference Center is just the size I
mean this thing is vast it is enormous
and probably the one of the plans you
might have lived there is that plan 25
from 1814 this is the culmination of a
major piece of work done from 1834
onwards and this is where you try to
present to the world the overall
conception of what he was about so this
drawing is deeply deeply significant in
it it shows a machine that's 15 foot
high six foot in diameter the main thing
that did all the processing and then a
store or a memory as we would now call
it extending almost indefinitely
now his entry-level machine had 100 what
we call registers what he called
variables hundred close now a machine
with a hundred variables would be 45
foot long and 15 foot high but he spoke
with machines ten times bigger he spoke
with machines with a thousand variables
now a machine with a thousand variables
would be five times the complete length
of this that's 90 feet roughly from
India and five times that would be the
thing the entry-level machine would be
45 foot long which is from more or less
where that stand is to the beginning of
the read steps so you don't matter
monster yeah
the analytical engine was so huge
Babbitt designed it to be driven by
steam but what made it superior to the
difference engine wasn't its size but a
small ingenious detail the other thing I
noticed when looking at runs and you
have to correct me if I'm wrong here but
something I thought was kind of
extraordinary about these plans was in
all of the vastness of this machine
there's one thing that really stands out
that makes it a computer really so I had
my colleagues print up a sort of mock-up
version of this nice wondering if you
could explain it for the condition alarm
but this illustrates the principle of
conditional branching and it sounds a
complex thing if then if this is true do
this if it's not true do something else
so there's a branch you take one or
another course of actions it's making a
decision either decision absolute so can
route its way through if you like a
decision space so the idea is that and
this stud or dowel moves forward and and
interrogate the space says 'is there
anything in that space so moves forward
if this stud the slug is absent nothing
happens it stops short and nothing
happens if this dowel is present then
that dowel moving forward will activate
this lever so whether or not this is
present it will or will not activate
that lever now this is terribly
important for one is a general principle
of computing that he can do bronze ring
still exists today absolutely absolutely
so if you did for example 10/3
it would go 10 7 for 1-2 absolutely and
then the next time that thing said have
you gone negative you protect rupes and
activate something that would multiply
by 10 didn't do the whole thing amazing
this is a revolutionary machine insofar
as it embodies almost all the logical
principles of a modern digital
electronic computer with 1840
astonishing
babbage's plans for a steam-driven
computer went far beyond the
comprehension of his contemporaries
he dreamt that one day banks of such
engines would industrialize the
production of forklifts mathematical
tables calculated from any number of
different equations
it fired the imagination of his young
Paula gee ada lovelace she threw herself
into understanding the complexities of
the machine and eventually began to
realize even more than Babbage himself
the full extent of what the analytical
engine could actually think about the
mechanics the hardware were only half
the story the computer needed software
if it were to be versatile enough to
calculate any type of equation and it
was here that Lovelace would reveal her
genius
[Music]
graphic novelist Sidney Padua is
somewhat of an accidental expert when it
comes to Babbage and Lovelace to Ada
Lovelace in the first thing it was a
complete accident they did a very short
biographical comic and just doing that
little bio you know four pages or three
pages or whatever and became completely
mesmerized by this person and the
machinery in the period the contrast was
so violent and exciting and also they
were just they're just wonderful
personalities I mean I just really like
them as people
her character did compliment Babbage I
mean in a sense they were very similar
people you know they were quietly
reminded they were very extra headstrong
stubborn and independent than you what
they wanted she liked to pursue her
obsessions when she really wanted to
find something out she wouldn't rest
until she got to the bottom of it I love
it so exactly ladylike good knowing
watch your entrances oh we can't wear
skirts and the engines lately in fact
it's a very serious hazard
not one for hanging around ADA went on a
tour of the cotton mills of the north of
England immediately after Babbage showed
her reforms she came to see this the
jacquard loom a state-of-the-art device
that automated the weaving of patterned
silk Babbage had an idea to repurpose
the technology to instruct his new
analytical engine if you come through
this way
my nightstand over there now
very simply the jacquard is at the top
and it's selecting which strings to lift
up so when you fresh the trade off
you'll hear a clunk up at the top but
you'll see these streams live downtown
so you can see the design building up
and we've now got they're actually
relatively quick yeah quicker than I was
expecting the jacquard mechanism meant
complicated patterns could be
manufactured by unskilled workers the
loom being controlled by a series of
punch cards the French part goes on top
and on each of these lines up with a
little pin mm-hmm oh the pin just goes
right through no the pin is pushed okay
so if you push it down then you'll see
according to the pattern and the cards
some of the little levers will go in
some room so now suddenly whatever was
on the card has been translated into
these hooks moving up and down yeah so
that difference then home no home is the
thing that causes something to happen
back in yeah it's it's a kind of binary
this was the height of technology in a
fast modernizing world what do you think
people were making of these machines at
the time how do they feel about them I
think a lot of people found them quite
unsettling if you kind of read period
descriptions of it you know they sound a
bit nervous about it where might this
lead you know this is where you start
seeing people comparing humans to
automata it does everything
automatically it turns automatically it
selects all the threads automatically
almost likes making decisions yeah
exactly I mean the machine is literally
selecting the threads the automation of
skilled labor was controversial
a group of textile workers known as
Luddites protested the technology would
steal their jobs ironically ADA's father
Lord Byron was a vocal supporter of
their movement
she had no such worries but saw how the
punch cards could work with Babbage's
new analytical engine the punch cards
bring in this element of choice actually
the power is in whoever program
Department ADA was fascinated by the men
making the cards they were translating
complicated patterns such as a flower
petal into a simple language the loom
could understand hole no hole the
world's first binary machine code she
later wrote we may say most aptly for
the analytical engine we use algebraic
patterns just as the jacquard loom
weaves flowers and leaves
[Music]
her enforced scientific upbringing was
paying dividends if ADA's early
education was driven sometimes cruelly
by her mother's wishes to purge her of
her father's poetical madness then ADA's
20s was fired by mathematical ambition
she once told her mother that she wanted
to compensate for Byron's misguided
genius in fact she said if he has
transmitted to me any portion of his
genius then I will use it to bring out
great truths and principles
[Music]
so over the next ten years as well as
getting married and having three
children she used her intellect to
absorb and uncover the maths needed to
demonstrate the abilities of the
analytical engine she also started to
grasp what Babbage's engine might be
truly capable of
the problem was her relationship with
Babbage was not equal
he was the lecturer and she the student
then in 1842 she got a chance to turn
the tables Babbage was woefully
inadequate promoting his machine and in
fact much of what we know about the
analytical engine comes from this key
book it started with a distraction of
the writings of an Italian military
engineer after he attended one of
Babbage's rare lectures and it's
entitled article XXIX sketch of the
analytical engine invented by Charles
Babbage a square by LF menabrea of Turin
officer of the military engineers luigi
menabrea notes were impressively
detailed but like Babbage he limited the
capabilities of the engine only to
mathematics making for a tough read a
must have driven her mad she knew the
engine way better than this Luigi guy
and yet here she was having to churn it
out like a secretary now to conceive how
these operations may be reproduced by a
machine suppose the latter to have three
dials designated ABC on each which a
trace a thousand divisions by way of
example over which a needle shall pass
Babbage suggested a de that this might
be a wasted opportunity and that she
should add some of her own thoughts to
accompany the translation she went at it
in her words like a devil possessed day
and night editorial for nine months she
formulated her thoughts on not so much
how the analytical engine worked but
rather the computational possibilities
of such a powerful machine
[Music]
ADA's notes ended up being twice the
length of the original and they even
some moments where she seems to be
addressing Babbage directly she talks
about the use of the punch cards and
even gives some examples of
configurations and here she even writes
a program for how to create Bernoulli
numbers now Bernoulli numbers are a
sequence of numbers that are important
in mathematics but what ADA's done is
written almost a recipe for how to make
these numbers a series of step-by-step
instructions that can be read by the
engine at the age of 27
Lovelace had articulated the language
that could instruct the machine to weave
her algebraic patterns
I suppose it's a bit controversial to
say exactly where the balance of credit
lies between Ada and Babbage for this
program ultimately it was Babbage's
machine so he must have known how the
program worked but what you can't argue
with is that this book makes ADA the
world's first published computer
programmer in 1843 but for me it's not
where her real contribution lights her
notes show ada was understanding how to
unlock the full potential of a computing
machine mathematician see the world in a
very particular way as much as you can
appreciate a day like this you also see
the mathematical patterns everywhere
around you everything from the movement
of the Sun in the sky to the surface
tension in the ripples on the water and
the fractal nature of the trees and ADA
as a mathematician would have been
exactly the same but it's not just in
the natural world if she was listening
to music she would have heard the
harmonics and thought about the
mathematical patterns that underpin the
way that the notes are created
she realized because Babbage's machine
could manipulate numbers and the world
is made of numbers the analytical engine
could manipulate anything
ada had this leap of imagination
that saw the machine as way beyond just
a calculator in her notes she writes the
engine might compose elaborate and
scientific music of any degree of
complexity or extent she envisages the
analytical engine has way more than
Babbage who essentially just saw him as
an enormous mechanical number cruncher
where Babbage just saw numbers she also
saw music
[Music]
for her the analytical engine was a tool
to investigate on the scene worlds
the mathematics that underpin us wound
she knew it had the potential to change
the world
she wrote a new and powerful language is
developed for the future use of analysis
either had voiced the aspirations and
possibilities of computing Babbage was
astounded by her vision the more I read
your notes the more surprised I am and
regret not having earlier explored so
rich a vein of the noblest metal fabric
it wrote a letter to Michael Faraday in
which he describes her as that
enchantress who's thrown her magical
spell over the most abstract of Sciences
and as drast it with a force few
masculine intellects could have exerted
over it to understand how she was able
to make this leap of thought it's
important to remember the inventiveness
of the time that she lived in and also
who her father was
ada had creativity in her blood and was
educated in science she understood that
the numbers on the engine could be
replaced with symbols and represents
something other than just quantities she
was on the brink of a new age of
discovery but that's not how it turned
out so what went wrong
[Applause]
to really prove the concept of a
computerized world money needs to be
raised to build the analytical engine
but that wasn't going to be easy with
Babbage in control he'd already been
given a considerable sum of government
money to build his previous machine and
yet he delivered no engine nor any
change from the 17,000 pounds they've
given him roughly the cost of two royal
navy warships at the time there was much
described in parliament over the
apparent waste of government money
none of this was helped by Babbage's
irascible personality he could be a
really difficult man and was constantly
getting into arguments with politicians
over money after one particularly
ferocious round with the prime minister
at the time Robert Peel Peale made his
thoughts known in a letter what shall we
do to get rid of mr. Babbage and his
calculating machine it would be
worthless as far as science is concerned
with Babbage at the helm it looked like
the analytical engine was dead in the
water
and then up stepped lady Lovelace
[Music]
ADA had a plan to get the analytical
engine funding she knew that she was
famous eloquent
frighteningly bright and the only person
in the world that had recognized the
full potential of the engine not just
for science but for the Empire her
proposal to Babbage was going to be a
sensitive subject in a letter dated 14th
of August 1843 after a few platitudes
she broached it I must now come to a
practical question respecting the future
would there be any chance of you
allowing myself to conduct the business
for you you're an undivided energies
being devoted to the execution of the
work basically you stick to building the
thing because you're a liability when it
comes to getting it made you will wonder
over this last query but I strongly
advise you not to reject it
[Music]
her somewhat presumptuous tone reflects
the passion she felt for the engine
writing her notes had revealed the
possibilities of a wondrous future one
she was desperate to bring to life but
it appears that ADA had crossed the line
with Babbage he refused all of her
conditions and any relinquishment of
control he said no it's not clear why
her friend and mentor turned his back on
her but I suspect she understood she
chosen to make her name in science
traditionally an all-male domain even
her tutor Augustus de Morgan impressed
as he was by ADA's ability thought that
she would fatigue herself with a
struggle of mind and body
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
it's likely that Babbage assumed that if
he couldn't raise the money then
Lovelace certainly could not women in
Victorian society were not seen as
equals with her scientific ambitions in
jeopardy
she came here and started gambling
it raises the intriguing possibility
that she was trying to raise money for
her beloved analytical engine I don't
think that ADA had gone completely
bonkers just yet anyway instead she was
thinking about the gambling from a
mathematical perspective in a way that
she always did now if you look at
gambling mathematically something you
don't really care about the reality of
the situation noise of the hooves or the
emotion of placing a bet itself instead
it's as though you're just thinking
about numbers on a page in a kind of
dispassionate way almost
so nine run us
and later skating secret missile logic
over emotion exactly how ada had been
trained she knew even the smallest
miscalculations by the bookmakers could
be exploited
[Music]
she was gambling her maths was better
than theirs
[Music]
biographer Ben Willie has researched
this particularly shady part of
Lovelace's life three-year-olds eight to
eleven rate or 11 yeah that means that
if you could whether you put a fiber on
you're going to be getting eight pounds
64 win number one sister tomorrow
what's even look like that's exactly why
you should do just pick a boards based
on his name yeah I know well that's the
element of race anyway
so why was she gambling in the first
place I mean why would she why did he
become so attracted to the horse races
at all
well one speculation one possibility is
the reason that she got into gambling in
this big way was because she wanted to
raise the money for the analytical
engine
since Babbage had come up with this
amazing machine this sort of precursor
of the modern computer this mechanical
computer and she'd written these notes
about it she'd become very personally
involved in the whole thing and perhaps
she saw this as an opportunity of
raising the enormous amounts of money
needed to you know bring it into
fruition to actually build the thing
[Music]
was she doing this gambling alone no she
had a little coterie of men surrounding
her which effectively acted as a
gambling syndicate people like well
there was chaptered nightingale almost
certainly florence Nightingale's father
although it's all fairly secretive the
names it's not entirely clear who they
are there's another one called John
cross the one who became her lover yes
John cross was the son of Andrew cross
who was this famous electrical scientist
some speculate inspiring the figure of
Frankenstein they provided the money
because she didn't have access to the
money herself this she was quite wealthy
women they wasn't she she wasn't a
wealthy woman in the sense that she
didn't have control over her own money
her mother had arranged that she didn't
get her hands basically on the family
fortune the success of the analytical
engine might have been resting on the
results of these horse races
you can as well made a profit of three
pounds 64 that was a risk worth taking
[Music]
okay I got the winning advanced winnings
Oh three pounds thank you for
my winnings me thank you
it's the big back it's the big lucky
there he even goes making the nine pal
yeah how did I do
I needed it very badly indeed she um she
had this series of bets that she put on
in the spring season of 1851 right here
on that turn and it went very very wrong
it resulted in her owing 3,200 pounds
which in 18 years a lot of money
yeah a lot of money it's probably around
half a million pounds it's only only had
pocket money really to go yeah she ended
up owing thousands of pounds some pretty
dodgy characters some of whom were you
know trying to extort money out of her
body suggesting that they were going
revealing what she'd done with her
gambling and so on
lead off it got very sticky for her by
that say which seemed to raise some of
her own contribution to this by calling
the family to eight hundred quid ada had
just lost the system we think that she
did allowed us has a bit carried away
with the emotion of the event well I
think yes who does that sort of perilous
combination of mathematics and
recklessness of risk and that's the hope
that she could use sort of the rational
methods that she'd learned through
mathematics in this kind of risky
environment and it paid it you know it
came off very badly border
ADIS syndicate had trusted in her
mathematical prowess but they hadn't
counted on the emergence of an old byron
family vice a love of taking risks
[Music]
her demise was Swift she'd worked hard
all her life a woman in a man's world
now just ten years after writing her
manifesto for a computer revolution her
dream was slipping away
[Music]
My Kingdom is not to be a temporal one
thank heavens labor is its own reward
and it is perhaps well for the worlds
that my line and ambition is over the
spiritual and not that I have taken it
into my head or lived in times and
circumstances calculated to put it into
my head to deal with the sword poison
and intrigue in the place of x y&z brain
of mine something more than mortal as
time or show the devil's in it if I've
not sucked out some of the lifeblood
from the mysteries of this universe no
one knows what almost awful energy lies
yet undeveloped in that wiry little
system of mine I say awful because you
can imagine what it might be under
different circumstances
your fairy forever I am
ADA remains supremely confident of her
ability however the one thing lady
Lovelace lacked was time
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in 1852 ada fell gravely ill she took to
her bed in this very room as she lay
dying painfully and slowly from what we
now know is almost certainly a cancer of
the womb she confessed to her mother
about her gambling debts now when she
finally did die ADA was just 36 years
old exactly the same age her father had
been at his death
her life had been full of regret her
determination to rise from the shadows
of her father had seemingly come too
little her extraordinary manifesto was
largely forgotten even Babbage rarely
talked about it history was shutting her
out there's one final twist in ADA's
story which I think is particularly
telling her last wish before she died
against her mother's will she insisted
on being taken miles away from her home
her wish was to be buried in this tomb
alongside the man she hadn't seen since
she was a baby her father Lord Byron
cheating husband poetical genius and
supporter of the Luddites now no one
really knows why she made this decision
perhaps she was trying to exert some
control in death that she lacked in life
perhaps it was a final attempt lasting
legacy but to my mind at least ADA the
daughter of art and science who
struggled so much with the coldness of
her mother in life longed for the warmth
of her father is thy face like thy
mother's my fair child ADA sole daughter
of my house and heart when last I saw
their young blue eyes they smiled and
then we parted
not as now we parked but with a hope her
coffin adorned with a crown was laid
beside Lord Byron ada lovelace returned
to the shadow of her more famous father
her contribution to science married
it took over a century for her genius to
be resurrected it was the height of
world war ii a time of national peril
here of Bletchley Park amidst great
secrecy a team of scientists were
experimenting with thinking machines one
key pioneer took a keen interest in
ADA's I DS of computer science and in
cheering the brains behind this machine
now it taken over a century but this was
finally an example of mechanized thought
in action cheerin was fascinated by how
a machine could be made to understand
and act upon instructions just as ada
had been a hundred years earlier
he designed this particular machine
codenamed the bomb and instructed it to
run through combinations and look for
patterns in data
it would prove vital in cracking
encrypted messages as Hitler's Armed
Forces
cheering had had the same idea as ADA
the ability to interchange numbers and
symbols in a computerized world in many
ways
Alan Turin and ada lovelace were kindred
spirits both saw further than any of
their peers as to the true versatility
of computers
cheering did his early work without
having seen ADA's notes became across
them in the 1940s now that must have
been an amazing moment almost like a
dialogue between two like-minded people
across history cheerin wrote about ADA's
work and our far-reaching ideas and it's
thanks to him that she's become known as
a pioneer of computers so how should we
remember lady Ada Lovelace
this was somebody with an enormous
talent in an extraordinary environment
hugely privileged with a background that
made her a celebrity from birth
struggling for Mullins how could she
make meaning of her life and the meaning
she sought was to be a servant to be
somebody could interpret the world and I
suppose in that sense her
accomplishments are undeniable right yes
yes she wrote about the engine what it
signified and what it meant in ways that
Babbage never did in all his 11 volumes
of published writings nowhere does he
write about the aspirations and
potential of computing the way that
Lovelace does and this is not a
suggestive hint this isn't a backwards
projection from her own age onto the
blank canvas of the past
this is Lovelace something the table
saying this is what is significant about
this machine
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the modern world now teams with
computers they're everywhere
often hidden as miniaturized microchips
if we don't take them totally for
granted we certainly aren't surprised
that they can do so much more than
simple number crunching ada had seen
this the extraordinary flexibility of
computers nearly 200 years ago it would
have been quite something
a Victorian Information Age with
Hardware driven by steam and software
with the power to unpick the fabric of
reality dreamt up by Ada Lovelace
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the Open University has produced a pack
to help you discover more about digital
technology in the past and present for
your free coffee call oh three hundred
three oh three oh five five three or
click on the link below
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