Instead of art and literature, Ada was tutored in mathematics and science. Lady Byron, who studied literature, science, philosophy, and mathematics, was determined that Ada not follow in her father’s footsteps.

Their marriage broke up shortly after Ada was born. As the daughter of Lord Byron and his first wife Anne Isabella Noel Byron, she enjoyed entry into the aristocracy. How did a young woman get the opportunity to show the world her talents in the 19th century? Mathematical intelligence was not the only thing Ada had going for her. Of course, all that came true-100 years later.īabbage was so impressed with Lovelace’s contributions, he dubbed her ' The Enchantress of Numbers.' A Wealth of OpportunitiesĬountess Augusta Ada Lovelace. She predicted that machines like the Analytical Engine could be used to compose music, produce graphics, and be useful to science. But more than that, Lovelace was a visionary: She understood that numbers could be used to represent more than just quantities, and a machine that could manipulate numbers could be made to manipulate any data represented by numbers. She suggested the data input that would program the machine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which is now considered the first computer program. Furthermore, she understood how to make it do the things computers do. Lovelace’s notes made it clear that she understood the Analytical Engine as well as Babbage did. Lovelace added her own notes to the lecture, which ended up being three times as long as the actual transcript. Ada, then in her late 20s and known as the Countess of Lovelace, was commissioned to translate the transcript into English. Luigi Menabrea, a mathematician (and future Italian prime minister), transcribed the lecture in French. In 1842, Babbage gave a lecture on the engine at the University of Turin. (Babbage’s Difference Engine was finally constructed between 19-and it worked.)īabbage was impressed with the brilliant young woman, and they corresponded for years, discussing math and computing as he developed the Analytical Engine. This machine also lacked financing and was never built. By 1834 he had moved on to design his Analytical Engine, the first general purpose computer, which used punch cards for input and output. Babbage never built the actual machine due to personal setbacks and financing difficulty. Ada was just a teenager when she met Cambridge mathematics professor Charles Babbage, who had invented the Difference Engine, a mechanical computer designed to produce mathematical tables automatically and error-free. The Enchantress of Numbersīorn Augusta Ada Byron on December 10, 1815, she was the daughter of notorious Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. Lovelace was a brilliant mathematician, thanks in part to her privileged birth. In the 1840s, she wrote the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine that existed only on paper. Ada Lovelace has been called the world’s first computer programmer.

The enchantress of numbers