We talk about the history of the creation of two important software products: Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha. It describes the challenges and achievements faced by the team led by Steve Wolfram, as well as the impact of these products on modern science and technology.
Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago. For some, she is a seminal figure in the history of computing; for others, it is a good overestimated personality. For a long time, we tried to understand how things really were. And so, before her bicentenary, they decided to figure out what they called “Ada’s secret”.
Historians disagree. People in history are difficult to study. Technology is hard to fathom. The whole story is intertwined with the customs of the 19th century British high society. And there is a surprising amount of misinformation and misinterpretation.
But after some research, including going through a lot of original documents, we feel like we finally understand who Ada Lovelace is and what her story is. This story is full of exciting, thrilling moments as well as tragic, disappointing ones.
This is a complex story, and to understand it, it will be necessary to tell a lot about it.
Let’s start from the beginning. Ada Byron (her maiden name) was born in London on December 10, 1815 to a newly married couple from high society. Her father – Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) – was 27 years old, and at that age he gained great popularity in England thanks to his poetry. Her mother, Annabella Milbank, a 23-year-old progressive, inherited the Baroness Wentworth title. Her father said he named her Ada because the name is short, old and singing.
Ada’s parents are a kind of sketch of opposites. Byron led a tumultuous life, and perhaps became the brightest “bad” (top bad boy) of the 19th century – with dark episodes from childhood and youth and a lot of romantic and other stories. In addition to writing poetry and flouting the social norms of his time, he often created something unusual: he kept a tame bear in his room while studying at Cambridge, for example, or lived with poets in Italy and “five peacocks on the grand staircase” (a quote from an acquaintance ) Byron), wrote a textbook on Armenian grammar, and, if he had not died so early, would have led the troops in the Greek War of Independence (which is commemorated by a large statue in Athens), despite his complete lack of military training.
Annabella Milbank was an educated, religious and very proper woman, passionate about reform and good works, whom Byron called the “Princess of Parallelograms”. Her marriage to Byron was short-lived, breaking up when Ada was only 5 weeks old; Pekla never saw her father again (although he kept a picture of her on his desk and mentioned her in his poetry). He died at the age of 36 at the height of his fame when Ada was 8. There was a huge uproar about it, which spawned hundreds of books and a “holy war” between the sympathizers of Lady Byron (as Ada’s mother imagined herself) and Byron himself, which lasted a century, if not more.
Ada spent her childhood secluded in her mother’s rented estates, with governesses, tutors and her cat, Mrs. Puff. Her mother, often absent for various (rather silly) health-related reasons, provided Ada with a rich education system with many hours of classes and self-control exercises. Ada studied history, literature, languages, geography, music, chemistry, sewing, cursive, and mathematics (taught partly empirically) up to the level of elementary geometry and algebra. When Ada was 11, she went on a year-long trip to Europe with her mother and her entourage. When she returned, she was deeply engrossed in the study of what she called phlyology, pondering how bird flight could be recreated with steam engines.
Ada then contracted measles (and possibly encephalitis), spending 3 years bedridden and in ill health as a result. She managed to fully recover by the time when, according to the customs of the society at that time, girls should have joined society: closer to 17, she went to London. On 5 June 1833, 26 days after she was “presented at Court” (i.e. met the King), she was received by 41-year-old Charles Babbage (whose eldest son was Ada’s age). Apparently, she charmed the owner, and he invited her and her mother to a demonstration of his newly created difference machine: a 60-centimeter-tall hand-operated contraption with two thousand brass components, which is now on display at the Science Museum in London:
Ada’s mother called her a “thinking machine” and later revealed that she could find the roots of quadratic equations and square some numbers. This event changed Ada’s life.
What is the history of Charles Babbage? His father was a successful and enterprising jeweler and banker. After various schools and private tutors, Babbage went to Cambridge, where he studied mathematics, but soon became enamored with the idea of modernizing the approaches to mathematics adopted there, and together with his friends (whose friendship lasted for a lifetime) John Herschel (son of the discoverer of Uranus) and George Peacock ( became a pioneer in abstract algebra), founded the Analytical Society (which later became known as the Cambridge Philosophical Society) to promote such reforms as, say, the replacement of Newton’s (British) point notation in calculus with Leibniz.
Babbage graduated from Cambridge in 1814 (a year before the birth of Ada Lovelace) and went with his wife to live in London, where he realized himself on the scientific and social scene. He had no job as such, but he lectured on astronomy and wrote several well-received papers in various mathematical fields (functional equations, infinitesimals, number theory, etc.), and was supported by his father and his wife’s family.
In 1819, Babbage visited France and learned of a large-scale government project to create tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions. Mathematical tables in those days had great significance in the military and commercial spheres, were used in science, finance, engineering calculations, and navigation. It was often said that errors in the tables could ground ships and destroy bridges.
Back in England, Babbage and Herschel set up a project to make tables for their new astronomical society, and in trying to verify the tables, Babbage is said to have exclaimed, “By God, let these tables be obtained by the power of steam!”, marking the beginning of his life-long labors in an attempt to mechanize the creation of these tables.
Mechanical calculators were around long before Babbage.Pascal made one in 1642, and we now know that there was at least one in ancient times as well. But in Babbage’s time, such machines were very rare and not reliable enough for regular use. Tables were created by human calculators (it was a profession), the work was distributed by team, and the lowest-level calculations were based on evaluating polynomials (say, series expansion) using the difference method.
Babbage thought that there might be such a device – a difference machine – that could calculate any polynomial up to a certain degree using the difference method, which would then automatically output the result, reducing the human factor to zero.
By the beginning of 1822, the 30-year-old Babbage was studying various types of mechanisms, creating prototypes and thinking about what a difference machine could be. The Astronomical Society, which he co-founded, awarded him a medal for the idea, and in 1823 the British government agreed to provide funding for a similar machine.
In 1824, Babbage deviated slightly from the topic with his idea for a life insurance company, for which he made many calculation tables. However, he set up a workshop in his stable (his “garage”) and continued to develop ideas on how to implement a difference machine using the components and tools of his time.
In 1827, the logarithm table, compiled by hand, was finally finished, after which it was reprinted for about a hundred years. Babbage printed these tables on yellow paper, pursuing the idea that this would reduce the number of errors when using them.
In addition, in 1827, Babbage’s father died, leaving him an inheritance of about one hundred thousand pounds, which is equal to $14,000,000 in modern terms, and this money provided Babbage for the rest of his life. His wife also died in the same year. She left him with eight children, of whom only three survived to adulthood.
Depressed by the death of his wife, Babbage went on a trip to continental Europe, and, impressed by the scientific achievements he saw, wrote a book – Reflections on the decline of science in England – which gave rise to sharp criticism of the Royal Society (of which he was a member).
Although often distracted, Babbage continued to work on the difference machine, producing thousands of pages of notes and construction drawings. He was very good at making drawings and experimenting with mechanisms. But in the management of the engineers he hired, he was not very strong, as well as in the management of finances. However, by 1832, a small working prototype of the difference machine (without a printing device) was successfully completed. And this was exactly what Ada Lovelace saw in June 1833.
Apparently, it was after Ada saw the difference machine that she became interested in mathematics. She met Mary Somerville, Laplace’s translator and renowned interpreter of science, and, partly under her influence, soon became an enthusiastic student of Euclid’s works. In 1834, Ada took part in a charity trip to the factories of northern England, organized by her mother, as a result of which she was impressed by the samples of high-tech equipment by the standards of those times.
After her return, Ada taught mathematics to some of the daughters of her mother’s friends. She continued to conduct classes by mail, noting that this could be “the beginning of a mathematical correspondence for many years between two ladies of the highest rank, which may no doubt be published hereafter as an instruction to mankind (mankind) or the feminine part of it (womankind – a play on words” ; both as a person and as a man). Ada’s letters did not contain complex mathematics, but she expressed herself very clearly, accompanying the letters with instructions such as “never limit yourself to an indirect proof when a direct one can be given.” (Much of what Ada mentioned in her correspondence is underlined, here italicized).
Babbage must have underestimated Ada at first, trying to interest them in the Silver Lady automaton toy he was showing off at his receptions. But Ada continued to communicate with Babbage and Somerville, both separately and together. And soon Babbage devoted it to many topics, including the problem of state financing of his project to create a difference machine.
In the spring of 1835, when Ada was 19, she met 30-year-old William King (or Lord William King, to be precise). He was a friend of Mary Somerville’s son, educated at Eton (the same school I went to 150 years ago) and Cambridge, and then a civil servant, later in an outpost of the British Empire in the Greek Islands. William seems to have been an accurate, conscientious, and decent man; maybe a little harsh. But, in any case, Ada and him quickly got things going, and on July 8, 1835, they got married, without announcing it until the last minute, fearing publicity and excessive press attention.
The next few years of Ada’s life seem to have been devoted to raising three children and managing a large farm, although she spent some time riding, learning to play the harp, and mathematics (including subjects such as spherical trigonometry). In 1837, Queen Victoria (then 18) ascended the throne, and as a member of high society, Ada met her. In 1838, in connection with his public service, William was created an earldom, and Ada became the Countess of Lovelace.
A few months after the birth of her third child in 1839, Ada returned to mathematics in earnest. She told Babbage that she wanted to find a tutor in mathematics in London, asking that her name not be mentioned – probably for fear of publicity.
Ade was introduced to Augustus de Morgan, the first professor of mathematics at University College London, an eminent logician, the author of several textbooks, and not only a friend of Babbage’s, but also the husband of the daughter of Ada’s mother’s primary childhood teacher. (Yes, it was a small world. De Morgan was also a friend of George Boole and the man who, albeit indirectly, was the cause of Boolean algebra.)
In correspondence with Babbage, Ada showed an interest in discrete mathematics and was surprised, for example, by the fact that solitaire “can be reduced to a mathematical formula and solved”. But according to the traditions of mathematical education of the time (which extends to our time), where Morgan taught Ada mathematical analysis.
Her letters to de Morgan regarding calculus were not particularly different from those for students studying mathematical analysis today, but were somewhat unusual for Victorian England. Even many of the errors are the same, although Hell is more affected than usual by bad notations in calculations (“why can’t you multiply by dx?” etc.). Ada was a diligent student and seemed to enjoy delving into the depths of mathematics. She was glad to discover her mathematical abilities and their high appreciation by de Morgan. She kept in touch with Babbage, and on one of his visits (in January 1841, when she was 25), she charmingly told the then 49-year-old Babbage “If you skate, promise to bring your skates to Occam; it’s the hottest place right now and a must-see.”
Ada’s relationship with her mother was very difficult. From the outside, it seemed that Ada treated her mother with great respect. But she seems to have constantly faced her mother’s attempts to control and manipulate her. Ada’s mother often complained about her health, lamented that she was about to die (but in fact she lived to be 64 years old). She often criticized Hell on the issues of raising children, running a household, and behavior in society. But on February 6, 1841, Ada had enough confidence in herself and her math studies to write a very detailed letter to her mother about her thoughts and aspirations.
She wrote: “I consider myself the possessor of a very rare combination of qualities perfectly suited to make me a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.” AND
spoke about how, after 25 years, she became less “hidden and suspicious” of her.knocked her off track. Incest was not illegal in England in those days, but it was scandalous
. , Apparently, the situation worsened, and she began to systematically take opiates. She really wanted to succeed in something, and began to think that perhaps she should devote herself to music and literature. , and at the end of 1842 she returned to mathematics.
What was Babbage doing all this time? A wide variety of things and with variable success.
After several attempts, he was able to establish himself as a professor of Lukasovsky mathematics in Cambridge, but later he did not visit there much. Nevertheless, he wrote what later turned out to be a very important book, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, which discussed how to allocate production tasks (a question that actually arose in connection with calculations of mathematical tables).
In 1837 he dealt with the popular natural theology of the time, adding his Ninth Treatise of Bridgewater to a series of treatises written by others. The central question went something like this: “Is there evidence for the existence of God in any observable features of nature and the environment?” Babbage’s book is quite difficult to read (and translate!); take, for example, the quote: “The concepts we draw from designs and plans are born from comparing our observations of the creations of other beings with the aspirations in which we see our own endeavors.” (“Explaining that we do persistence and thinking from creating our reviews on the work of other things with intentions that should be in our understanding.”)
Clearly resonating with some ideas from my published work 15 , he speculates on the relationships between mechanical processes, laws of nature, and free will. In his book he claims that “complex calculations can be performed by mechanical means”, but then goes on to claim (giving very weak examples) that a mechanical engine can produce sequences of numbers that show unexpected changes, likening it to a miracle.
Babbage tried his hand at politics, running twice for parliament on an industry-oriented platform, but failed to win an election, in part because of allegations of mishandling of public money allocated to the difference machine.
Babbage continued to host high-class receptions at his London home, attracting such luminaries as Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Michael Faraday and the Duke of Wellington, who was often accompanied by his elderly mother. But even despite the number of titles and honors that were listed in the six lines after his name, he was greatly upset, as he believed, by the lack of recognition.
Babbage tried his hand at politics, running twice for parliament on an industry-oriented platform, but failed to win an election, in part because of allegations of mishandling of public money allocated to the difference machine.
Babbage continued to host high-class receptions at his London home, attracting such luminaries as Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Michael Faraday and the Duke of Wellington, who was often accompanied by his elderly mother. But even despite the number of titles and honors that were listed in the six lines after his name, he was greatly upset, as he believed, by the lack of recognition.
Babbage created some very complex designs, and now it looks like they could work just fine. But let’s go back to 1826, when Babbage invented what he called “Mechanical Notation”. Its purpose was to represent the operations of mechanisms in symbols, as well as how mathematical notation describes operations in mathematics.
By 1826, Babbage was very depressed that people did not appreciate his invention. No doubt people did not understand him, because even now it is not clear how his inventions work. But, perhaps, this was his greatest invention, the construction and principles of which he was able to describe in detail.
Babbage’s project to create a difference machine cost the British Crown £17,500, which is about $2,000,000 in today’s money. This was a very modest amount compared to other government expenditures, but the project was widely discussed because of its unusualness. Babbage was fond of emphasizing that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he received no government money for his work (except for payments to upgrade his workshop to a fireproof one, etc.). He also claimed to have spent £20,000 of his own money – most of his fortune (not quite sure where that figure came from) on his various projects. And he continued to try to get more support from the state, outlining a plan for his No. 2 difference machine that required only 8,000 parts instead of 25,000.
By 1842, the government had changed and Babbage insisted on meeting the new Prime Minister (Robert Peel) but was unsuccessful, much to his anger. In the parliament, the idea of financing a different machine, in the end, begged under the weight of jokes about its use. (The transcripts of the difference machine debate are quite fascinating, especially when it comes to discussing its possible applications for government statistics, which resonates surprisingly well with today’s Wolfram|Alpha computing capabilities.)
Despite the lack of support in England, Babbage’s ideas gained some traction elsewhere, and in 1840 Babbage was invited to lecture on the Analytical Engine in Turin, where he was honored by the Italian government.
Babbage never published any detailed review of the difference engine, and he wrote nothing at all about the analytical engine. But he was talking about the Analytical Engine in Turin to none other than Luigi Menabrea, a 30-year-old military engineer who 27 years later became Prime Minister of Italy (and also contributed to the development of structural analysis in mathematics).
In October 1842, Menabrea published an article in French based on his notes. When Ada saw his article, she decided to translate it into English and submit it to a British publication. Babbage said years later that he had suggested that Ada write her own paper on the Analytical Engine, to which she replied that the idea had never occurred to her. Nevertheless, in February 1843, Ada decided to make a translation and add extensive notes to it.
In the following months, she worked very diligently on this topic, conducting an almost daily exchange of letters with Babbage (despite the presence of other urgent and unavoidable meetings). And although in those days letters were sent by post (which came 6 times a day in London in those days) or sent by courier (Ada lived about a mile from Babbage when she lived in London), they were very similar to modern e – mail exchanged between project participants, except for the fact that this case took place in Victorian England. Ada asks Babbage a question; he answers; she explains something; he comments on it. She was clearly in command, but it was felt that she became very annoyed when Babbage, for example, tried to make his own corrections to her manuscript.
It’s fascinating to read Ada’s letters as she works on fixing her system of calculating Bernoulli numbers: “My dear Babbage. I am very confused when I come across these numbers, so I don’t have a chance to sort them all out today… So I’m going back to horseback riding. Tant mieux (the better – French) .collected in great detail and scrupulously.” Then she added that William (or ‘Lord L.’ as she called him)” had very kindly circled everything for me in ink.
It seems that it was William who suggested that she sign the translation and notes. As she wrote to Babbage: “It was my desire to sign, and at the same time I wanted to add something to help identify me, to connect this text with future works signed as AAL” (Ada Augusta Lovelace).
By the end of July 1843, Ada had almost finished her notes. She was proud of them, just as Babbage spoke highly of them. But Babbage wanted something else: to add an anonymous foreword (written by him) that described how the British government had failed to support the project. Hell, that seemed like a bad idea. Babbage insisted, saying that without a preface the publication should be withdrawn. Hell was furious, and told Babbage about it. Ada’s translation eventually appeared, signed “AAL” and without a preface, containing her notes in the “Translator’s Notes” section.
Ada very happily sent her mother a copy of the article, explaining that “no one can appreciate the magnitude of the problem and the endless work involved in re-checking all the mathematical formulas for printing. This is a happy prospect, for it turns out that there are many hundreds and thousands of such formulas in that or another. otherwise they will come out from under my pen.” She said that her husband William enthusiastically distributed copies to his friends, and also wrote that “William represents me in such a righteous light that no one else has been able to equal him in this. And he also tells me that my work is well done.” marks on his reputation.
For several days, the whole society discussed Ada’s publication. She explained to her mother that she and William “didn’t want to do it in secret, but at the same time, they didn’t want the importance of this event to be exaggerated and overstated.” She saw herself as a successful interpreter and interpreter of Babbage’s works, presenting them in a clearer light.
Much can be said about the content of Ada’s records. But before we get to that, let’s finish the story of Ada itself.
And even if Babbage’s preface was not a good idea, it was the one that prompted Ada to write him a very fascinating and very frank 16-page letter on August 14, 1843. (Unlike her usual letters on small folded pages, this was on large sheets.) In it, she explains that he is often “implicit” in his speeches and she herself is “always an explicit function of x”. She says that “Your affairs have deeply occupied me and Lord Lovelace… And so it happens that I have plans for you…” Then she goes on to the question: “If I introduce you for a year or two a very worthy proposition for the making of your machine… will there be any chance in assuming me… to manage the matter; it will allow you to fully focus directly on work…”
In other words, she proposed that he take the role of manager, and Babbage become the technical director. It was not easy, especially given Babbage’s personality. But she skillfully did her job, and as part of it, she talked about arranging her motives. Ada wrote: “My own indisputable principle is to seek to love truth and God more than glory and honor…”, while your “love of truth and God…is overshadowed by the desire for glory and recognition”. But she explained further: “I wouldn’t be myself if I denied the influence of ambition and thirst for fame on myself. No living soul has been more concerned about it than I am … and I certainly would not deceive myself or others by pretending that it is not at all an important motive and component of my character and nature.”
And she ended the letter like this: “I wonder if you will continue working with your lady-fairy?”
At noon the next day, she wrote to Babbage again, asking for help with the “final revision”.Then she added: “You received my long letter this morning. Maybe you don’t want to deal with me anymore. But I hope for the best…”
At 5 o’clock in the evening of the same day, Ada was in London and wrote to her mother: “I do not see how the matter with Babbage will turn out. . . . I have written to him . . . very specifically, presenting my own terms to him . . . He is so convinced of the superiority of his supremacy that, will probably refuse; although I demanded him to make strong concessions.If he accepts my offer, I’ll probably have to step into his situation and get his car finished (however, based on what I’ve seen of him and his habits over the past three months, I don’t think that’s likely to happen, at least, if someone does not strongly influence and force him). Sometimes it is excessively disorganized and unsystematic. I am ready to do it for the next three years, if I see decent chances of success.”
On a copy of Ada Babbage’s letter, he wrote: “Saw AAL this morning and declined all her offers.”
Nevertheless, on August 18, Babbage wrote to Ada that he would bring notes and drawings when he next visited her. The following week, Ada wrote to Babbage: “We are very glad of your (somewhat unexpected) proposal” (after a long visit to Ada and her husband). After Ada wrote to her mother: “Babbage and I are, I think, on better terms now than ever. I have never seen him so sweet, so reasonable and in such a good spirit!
Then, on September 9, Babbage wrote to Ade, expressing his admiration for her and calling her “a number charmer” and “my dear and excellent interpreter.” (Yes, he is often misquoted, he wrote “numbers” not “numbers”).
The next day, Ada replied to Babbage: “You are a brave person to allow your enchantress to rule over you!”, and Babbage signed himself in the next letter as “Your humble servant.” And in her letter to her mother, Ada described herself as “the high priestess of Babbage’s difference machine.”
But, unfortunately, everything did not turn out as expected. For a while, Ada took care of family and household chores, neglected during the period when she concentrated on her records. But after that, her health seriously deteriorated, and she spent many months on doctors and various “healers” (her mother offered her “mesmerism”, that is, hypnosis).
However, she was still interested in science. Ada communicated with Michael Faraday, who called her “the rising star of science”. She spoke of her first publication as “her first-born”, “in colors and with subtexts (very implicitly expressed) of her very general and large metaphysical ideas”. She wrote: “He (her work; she calls him “He” – note) will become (as I hope) a wonderful head of a large family with many brothers and sisters.”
When her notes were published, Babbage said: You should write your own paper. However, if you wait a little, it can be made even more beautiful.” But in October 1844, David Brewster (inventor of the kaleidoscope, among other things) decided to write about the Analytical Engine, and Ada asked if perhaps Brewster could suggest another topic for her, saying, “I think some subjects in the field of physiology could suit me, however, like any other.
Indeed, in the same year she wrote to her friend (who was also her lawyer and the son of Maria Somerville): “I do not think that the structures of the brain are less subject to mathematicians than the motions and properties of the stars and planets; quite if you choose to consider them the right opinion.I would like to leave a computational model of the nervous system to the next generation.” An impressive vision, and this was 10 years before, for example, George Boole raised questions about such things.
Both Babbage and Mary Somerville began their scientific careers in translation, and she saw the same path for herself, saying that perhaps her next works would be reviews of Wavell and Ohm, and that she might in general become a “prophet of science “.
Of course, she also had obstacles. Like, for example, the fact that women at that time did not have access to the Royal Society library in London, although her husband, thanks in part to her efforts, was a member of the society. But the most serious problem, as before, was Ada’s health. She had many problems, although in 1846 she still spoke optimistically: “All you need is a year or two of patience and attention to your health.»
There were also problems with money. William had an endless series of complex and often quite innovative building projects (he seems to have been particularly interested in towers and tunnels). And with a request for funding, they had to turn to Ada’s mother, who was often difficult to deal with. Ada’s children were already in their teens, and she had to spend a lot of time with them.
Meanwhile, she had a good relationship with Babbage, she began to see him more often, although in her letters she talks about dogs and pet parrots more often than about the Analytical Machine. In 1848, Babbage had the reckless idea of building a tic-tac-toe machine to tour the country to raise money for his projects. Ada refused him. Babbage’s idea centered around a meeting with Prince Albert to discuss his machines, but this never happened.
William was also published. He already had short works with titles such as “A Method of Growing Beans and Cabbage on the Same Ground” and “On Mangold Beetroots”. But in 1848 he wrote another paper comparing the agricultural productivity of France and England, based on detailed statistics, with remarks such as “It is easy to show that the French are not only much worse than the English, but that they now eat even worse, than in the worst days of the empire”
1850 was an important year for Ada. She and William moved to a new house in London, increasing their presence on the London scientific scene as a result. She was deeply impressed after visiting her father’s family home in the north of England for the first time, causing an argument with her mother. Then she got into betting on jumps and lost some money on it. (One might say that it was in her style, or Babbage’s, to develop some mathematical scheme for betting, but there is no evidence that they did this.)
In May 1851, the world exhibition opened in the Crystal Palace in London. (When Ada decided to visit in January, Babbage wrote to her: “Please put on woolen stockings, cork-soled shoes, and anything else that will keep you warm.”) The exhibition displayed the cutting edge of Victorian science and technology, and Ada , Babbage and their scientific circle were impressed (although Babbage expected more). Babbage distributed postcards based on his mechanical notation in large quantities. William received an award for solutions in the field of brick production.
However, during this year, the situation with Ada’s health became very difficult. For a while, her doctors simply advised her to spend more time at sea. But eventually they found she had cancer (based on what we know now, it was most likely cervical cancer). Opium no longer dulled the pain; she began experimenting with marijuana. By August 1852, she wrote: “I am beginning to understand death; it is imperceptibly and gradually picking up every minute, and it will never be the matter of any particular moment.” And on August 19, she asked Babbage’s friend – Charles Dickens – to come to her and read the story about death from one of his books.
Her mother moved into her house, keeping other people away from her, and on September 1, Ada made some unknown confession that clearly upset William. She appeared to be close to death, but overcoming the pain, she held on for another three months, and finally died on November 27, 1852, at the age of 36.Florence Nightingale, Ada’s nurse and friend, wrote: “It is said that she could not have lived so long but for the enormous vitality of her brain, which refused to die.”
Ada chose Babbage as her executor. And, to her mother’s chagrin, was buried in the Byron family crypt alongside her father, who, like her, died at the age of 36 (Hell lived 266 days longer). Her mother built a memorial that contained a sonnet called “Rainbow” written by Ada.
Ada’s funeral was very modest; neither her mother nor Babbage were present. But the obituaries were kind, in the spirit of the Victorian era:
William outlived her by 41 years, eventually remarrying. Her eldest son, with whom Ada had many difficulties, joined the navy a few years before her death, but then deserted. Ada thought he might have gone to America (apparently he was in San Francisco in 1851), but he actually died at 26 while working in a shipyard in England. Ada’s daughter married an eccentric poet, spent many years in the Middle East and became the world’s greatest scout of Arabian horses. Ada’s younger son inherited the family title and spent most of his life in the family estate.
Ada’s mother died in 1860, but even then gossip about her and Byron continued to appear in articles and books, including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Lady Byron Vindicated in 1870. In 1905, a year before his death, Ada’s youngest son, who was brought up mostly by his grandmother (Ada’s mother), published a book about it all, with a main message along the lines of “there is nothing interesting in Lord Byron’s life, except that which has already been discussed many times”.
When Ada died, her identity became a tangle of gossip and rumours. Did she have affairs? Did she have huge gambling debts? Arguments and evidence were very meager. Perhaps this was a reflection of the ideas about her father-bad. But long before that, she was rumored to have pawned (twice!) her family jewels and lost what some said was £20,000, maybe even £40,000 (equivalent to about $7,000,000 in today’s money) on horse bets .
Ada’s mother and her younger son seemed to be against her. On September 1, 1852, the day of her confession to William, Ada wrote: “My frantic dying appeal to all my friends who have letters from me: Give them to my mother, Lady Noel Byron, after my death.” Babbage refused. Others agreed. But later, when her son systematized them, some of them decided to destroy.
However, many thousands of pages from Ada’s letters are still scattered around the world. Letters and replies to them are similar to modern correspondence – arrangements for meetings, conversations about health and illness. Charles Babbage complains about the postal service. Three sisters from Greece ask Ada for money, because their dead brother was Lord Byron’s page. Charles Dickens talks about chamomile tea. Courtesy of a man Ada met at Paddington Station. And household calculations, diluted with notes, inserts of musical parts, recipes for various sweets. And then, mixed in with all of the above, serious intellectual discussions about the Analytical Engine and many other things.
So what happened to Babbage? He lived another 18 years after Ada’s death and died in 1871. He tried to continue work on the analytical machine of 1856, but did not achieve much success. He wrote articles such as “Lighthouse Statistics”, “Relative Frequency Table for Causes of Glass Window Breakages”, “On Ancient Artifacts of Human Art Mixed with the Bones of Extinct Animal Species”.
Then, in 1864, he published his autobiography – Excerpts from the Life of a Philosopher – a very strange and bitter creation. The chapter on the analytical machine opens with a quote from Byron’s poem – “Man wrongs, and Time avenges” (“Man wrongs, and Time avenges”; Chumina O. translated in 1905 as follows: “Injustice is in the world, but revenge is in the future “), and continues in the same vein. There are chapters on theatre, travel advice (including advice on how to organize your own transport in Europe in a modern mobile home), and, perhaps most surprisingly, on trouble for some reason, Babbage campaigned against street musicians who, he claimed, woke him up at 6 a.m., causing him to lose a quarter of his productive time. It is not known why he did not develop some sort of soundproofing solution, but his the campaign was so prominent, and so amazing, that when he died, it was the main message in his obituary.
Babbage never remarried after his wife’s death, and his last years seem to have been quite lonely. In the social gossip column of that time, the following was written about him:
He must have liked to say that he would happily give up the remainder of his life for three days spent 500 years in the future. When he died, his brain was preserved and is still on display…
And even if Babbage never built his difference machine, a Swedish company did it for him, even demonstrating part of it at the world exhibition. When Babbage died, many of the documents and components of his Difference Engine project passed to his son, Major General Henry Babbage, who published some of these documents and privately assembled several devices and some components of the computing part of the Analytical Engine. Meanwhile, a fragment of a difference machine built during Babbage’s time was exhibited at the Science Museum in London.
After Babbage’s death, his life’s work on the creation of computing machines 1 was largely forgotten (although, for example, they were mentioned in the Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1911). Nevertheless, mechanical computers continued to develop, gradually giving way to electromechanical computers, which, in turn, gave way to electronic ones. And when people started getting into programming in the 1940s, Babbage’s work and Ada’s notes were remembered again.
People knew that “AAL” was Ada Augusta Lovelace and that she was Byron’s daughter. Alan Turing read her notes and coined the term “Lady Lovelace’s objection” (about AI’s inability to create and create) in his 1950 article on the Turing Test. But Ada herself was represented in it only as a footnote.
There was a certain Bertram Bowden, a British nuclear physicist who went on to work in the computer industry and eventually became Minister for Education and Science, and who rediscovered Hell. In his 1953 book Faster Than Thought (yes, about computers), he writes that he contacted Ada’s granddaughter, Lady Wentworth (daughter of Ada’s daughter), who told him of the family knowledge of Ada, both accurate and yes and not very, and allowed him to study her works. Interestingly, Bowden notes that Ada’s granddaughter’s book, On Thoroughbreds and Their Pedigrees, uses a binary system in their pedigree calculations. Hell, like the Analytical Machine, of course, used the decimal system, not considering binary in any way.
But even in the 1960s, Babbage and Ada were not particularly famous. The prototype of Babbage’s difference machine was given to the Science Museum in London, but although I visited it many times as a child (60s), I’m sure I never saw it there. Nevertheless, in the 1980s, especially after the US Department of Defense named its ill-fated programming language after Ada, awareness of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage began to increase, and biographies of them began to appear, sometimes full of idiotic mistakes (my beloved — where the reference to the “three-body problem” in Babbage’s letter is interpreted as a romantic triangle between Babbage, Ada, and William, even though it was a three-body problem in celestial mechanics!).
As interest in Babbage and Ada grew, so did curiosity about whether a different machine would work if built from Babbage’s designs. The project was started, and in 1991, after a titanic effort, the finished version of the difference machine was built (and the printer was added in 2000) with only one correction in the drawings. Surprisingly, the car worked. Construction cost about the same (adjusted for inflation) as Babbage had requested from the British government back in 1823.
As for the Analytical Engine, no version of it was ever created, not even a model simulating it.
So, now that I’ve talked (in great detail) about Ada Lovelace’s life, what exactly was in her Analytical Machine notes?
It begins without an introduction: “the function whose integral the difference machine must consider is…” Then it explains that the difference machine can calculate the value of any sixth-degree polynomials, and the analytical machine is distinguished by the fact that it can perform operations on any what sequence Or to quote: “The analytic machine is a reflection of the science of operations, constructed in such a way that abstract numbers are the subjects of those operations. A differential machine embodies only one particular, and a very limited set of operations at that…”
Very charming, at least to me, given how many years I’ve spent on Mathematica; a little later she writes: “We may consider the machine as the material and mechanical embodiment of analysis, and that our actual capacities in this department of human cognition will be used more effectively than before. This is necessary in order to keep pace with our theoretical knowledge of these principles ” and laws. And this is realized through obtaining full control over the handling of algebraic and numerical symbols, which the machine gives us
.patterns like a Jacquard loom weaving flowers and leaves.” Ada then breaks down how the Analytical Engine would sequence particular kinds of calculations, with “operation maps” that define the sequence of operations and “variable maps” that specify meaning. Ada reflects on cycles, and cycles of cycles, etc., now known as cycles and nested cycles, defining them in mathematical notation. She writes that “there is a beautiful fabric portrait of Jacquard , which required 24,000 cards.” She then discusses the idea of using loops to reduce the number of cards, and the value of reordering operations to optimize their execution by the Analytical Engine, ultimately showing that it is possible to do with three cards what would require 330 without loops.
Pekla speculates on how far the analytical machine can go in its capabilities, making calculable (at least with some precision) what previously seemed impossible. And as an example, she cites the problem of three bodies, and the fact that at one time “from the calculation of 295 coefficients of lunar indignation” many calculations did not agree.
Finally, in her Note G (which can be translated as Note G, or as note salt – a play on words), she writes: “The Analytical Machine cannot create anything new. It can do everything that we ourselves know how to do … its purpose is only in helping us accomplish what we are already very familiar with.”
Pekla seemed to present the traditional view of programming with complete clarity: we create a program that does the things we want it to do. But then she notes that presenting the “facts and formulas of analysis” in a machine-friendly form “will cast many areas of knowledge in a new light, making them more deeply worked out.” In other words, as I often noted, if we program something, we learn something new about it; it will open new horizons of understanding for us.
She says that “in bringing mathematical truths into a new form in which they will be used, will give us a new vision, which in turn will affect the theoretical component of this field of knowledge”. In other words, as I have often said (see the post on Habré “Computable knowledge and the future of pure mathematics”) — the representation of mathematical truths in a computable form will probably allow us to better understand them.
Ada seemed to understand that the “science of operations” performed by a machine could be applied to more than just traditional mathematical calculations. For example, she notes that if “the fundamental relationships between sounds in the science of harmony were exposed to abstract operations, then a machine could use them to scientifically write musical pieces of any complexity.” Not a bad level of understanding for 1843.
The most famous piece among Ada’s writings is the calculation of Bernoulli’s numbers in Note G. This topic appears to be a development of her letter to Babbage in July 1843. The letter begins: “I work in the sweat of my brow, like the devil himself; (which perhaps I am”). She then asks a few follow-up questions and then writes: “I want to talk about Bernoulli numbers in one of my notes as an example of how an implicit function can be computed by a machine without using human minds and hands … Please give me necessary data and formulas”.
Adoy’s choice of Bernoulli numbers to demonstrate the Analytical Engine was very interesting. In the 17th century, for example, some spent their entire lives developing tables of sums of powers of integers, in other words, tabulating values for various m and n. But Jacob Bernoulli discovered that all such sums can be expressed as polynomials in m with coefficients now called Bernoulli numbers. And in 1713, Bernoulli proudly announced that he had calculated the first 10 Bernoulli numbers “in a quarter of an hour”, reproducing many years of other people’s work.
These days, of course, they can be computed instantly in, say, Wolfram Language:
And it so happened that a few years ago, as part of a demonstration of new algorithms, we calculated 10 million of them.
Okay, but how did Ada plan to do that? She started with the fact that Bernoulli numbers appear when expanding into a series:
Then, rearranging the components of this expression and sorting by powers of x, she obtained a sequence of equations for the Bernoulli numbers B n , which she guessed to represent in recursive form:
Ada then explained how to calculate it on the analytical machine. First, she used the fact that all odd Bernoulli numbers except B 1 are zero, then calculated B n , which is our modern B 2 n (or BernoulliB[2n] in the Wolfram Language). Next, she started with B 0 and then calculated B n for large n, keeping each value she got. This is what the algorithm used by her looked like (in its modern form):
The idea behind computing on an Analytical Engine was to implement a sequence of operations (specified by “op maps”) using a “number cruncher” (Mill), with operands coming from a “store” (with addresses specified on a “variable map” ). (In the store, each number was represented by a sequence of wheels, each of which had to be rolled to the required digit.) To calculate the Bernoulli numbers, Ada wanted to use two nested loops of operations. With the analytical machine model available at that time, Ada had to deploy these cycles. But eventually she successfully described how B8 (which she called B7) could be calculated:
In essence, this is a program trace on an analytical machine that is executed in 25 steps (plus a loop). At each trace step, it shows which operation is performed on which variable map, and which variable map the result is written to. Not having a symbolic designation of the cycles, Ada simply put them in parentheses and explained that these fragments should be repeated.
Finally, the final result of the calculations is written in position 24:
As you can see, Ada has an error in line 4, due to which the fraction came out upside down. But if you fix that, you can easily get a modern version of what Ada did:
And here is what the same scheme will produce for the next two (non-zero) Bernoulli numbers. Ada found that calculating the following numbers does not require more memory (which is implemented by variable maps), but only a greater number of operations.
The Analytical Engine, developed in 1843, was supposed to store a thousand 40-digit numbers, which would allow calculations up to perhaps B 50 (=495057205241079648212477525/66). And it would be very fast; the analytical machine was designed for a performance of 7 operations per second. So B 8 would take 5 seconds to calculate and B 50 would take something like a minute.
Interestingly, even the record-breaking performance of Bernoulli numbers a few years ago used basically the same algorithm as Ada’s, although now there are slightly faster ones that efficiently compute the moduli of Bernoulli numbers as a sequence of primes and then restore them to an integer , using the Chinese remainder theorem.
The Analytical Engine and its creation was Babbage’s life’s work. So what did Ada bring? Ada saw herself primarily as an interpreter of his works. Babbage showed her many plans and examples of the Analytical Engine. She wanted to imagine the overall vision of it as everything being interconnected; as she put it: “to bring a general, large-scale, metaphysical vision”.
Babbage’s archive of papers (found years later in the leather briefcase of their family’s solicitor) contains a large number of descriptions of the workings of the Analytical Engine, from the 1830s onwards for decades, with titles such as “The Analytical Engine” and “The Science of Numbers”. .Why Babbage did not publish any of them is not clear.They are very detailed descriptions of the basic principles of the machine, although they certainly seem less interesting than Ada’s work.
Babbage died while working on The History of the Analytical Engine, which was later completed by his son. It provides a dated list of “446 Remarks on the Analytical Engine”, each of which describes how some operation – say, division – can be implemented on it. Dates begin in the 1830s, continuing into the 1840s, but with an almost complete absence of records in the summer of 1843.
Meanwhile, Babbage’s collection of papers on display at the Science Museum contains some sketches of high-level operations for the Analytical Engine. For example, the entry from 1837: “the difference between two equations of the first degree”, which is the essence of the evaluation of a rational function:
Є кілька дуже простих рекурентних співвідношень:
Then, in an entry from 1838, the calculation of the coefficients of the product of two polynomials is described:
But there is nothing in his writings comparable in complexity and clarity to Ada’s calculations of Bernoulli numbers. Babbage certainly assisted Ada in her work, but she was definitely at the forefront of this work.
So what did Babbage say about this? In his autobiography, written 26 years later, he rarely wrote good things about anyone or anything. Here’s what he writes about Ada’s notes: “We discussed together various illustrations that could be submitted for publication; I suggested a few, but the choice was entirely hers. There was also work on various algebraic problems, except, of course, those related to associated with Bernoulli’s numbers, which I volunteered to solve myself, to save Lady Lovelace the extra trouble, and she then forwarded me a corrected version, having discovered the blunder I had made.
When I first read it, it seemed that Babbage was saying that he was a literary negro of all Ada notes. But upon re-reading, I realized that he was only saying that he was offering Ada different options that she could either accept or reject.
There is no doubt in my mind how it was: Ada had an idea of what the Analytical Engine could do, and she was asking Babbage about how it could be implemented. In my personal experience with hardware designers, their answers were often very detailed. Ada’s achievement was to combine these details into a clear picture of how the machine worked—something Babbage had never done. (In his autobiography, he often simply refers to Ada’s records.)
For all its flaws, the fact that Babbage figured out how to build (and have a functioning) difference engine, let alone an analytical engine, is quite impressive. So how did he do it? I think the key was in his mechanical notation. He wrote about it for the first time in 1826 in an article entitled “Methods of marking machine operations by means of signs”. His idea was to take the detailed structure of a machine and represent it with the help of symbolic diagrams, how the components should interact with each other. As the first example, he cites a hydraulic device:
He then gives the example of a clock, showing on a kind of “execution trace” on the left how the parameters of the clock’s components change, and on the right something like a block diagram of their relationships:
This is a pretty good way of visualizing how the system works, similar in some respects to modern time charts, but somewhat different. And over the years that Babbage spent working on the Analytical Engine, his notes began to contain more complex diagrams. It’s not entirely clear what something below means:
However, there are striking similarities to modern representations of Modelica, such as, say, Wolfram SystemModeler.(One of the differences with modern representations is that nowadays the subsystems appear much more hierarchical, and also that all representations are now computable and can be used to model the actual behavior of the system.)
Babbage actively used his various diagrams in his notes, but never published anything about them. Indeed, there is only one other printed work by him on mechanical notation, a booklet given out at the 1851 World’s Fair, apparently as a step toward standardizing drawings of mechanical components (and these notations, like the one above, appear periodically on Babbage’s diagrams) .
I’m not sure why Babbage didn’t write more about his mechanical notation and diagrams. Perhaps he was bitter that in 1826 people failed to realize the value of these ideas. Or maybe he saw them as the “secret ingredient” that allowed him to create his designs. And although engineering systems have come a long way since Babbage’s time, his ideas can still be a source of inspiration.
So what does everything that happened to Ada, Babbage and the Analytical Engine look like on a larger scale?
Charles Babbage was an energetic man with many ideas, some of them good. At the age of 30, he wanted to make mathematical tables with the help of a machine and never gave up on his idea for the next 49 years, while inventing an analytical machine to achieve this goal. He was great, maybe even gifted, when it came to the engineering part. But he was very bad at choosing the trajectory for the project, its management.
Ada Lovelace was an intelligent woman who befriended Babbage (there is no evidence that they ever had anything romantic). Thanks to Babbage, she described the working principles of the Analytical Engine, while bringing a more abstract vision of it than Babbage’s, as well as an insight into the incredibly powerful idea of universal computing.
A different machine and similar devices are special-purpose computers, the hardware part of which is designed only to do one specific thing. It would seem that to do many different things, you will need a large number of different computers. But it is not so. Instead, we are faced with the fundamental fact that it is possible to make general-purpose computers, where a single and fixed piece of hardware can be programmed to perform any computation. And it was this idea of universal computing that enabled the software that launched the computing revolution of the 20th century.
As far back as the 17th century, Leibniz already had a philosophical concept of something like universal computing. However, this topic did not develop. And Babbage’s analytical machine is the first and clear example of machines known to us capable of performing universal calculations.
Babbage did not think about it in such a perspective. He simply wanted to create a machine that would be as efficient as possible in producing mathematical tables. But in his desire to develop it, he came up with the concept of a universal computer.
When Ada wrote about Babbage’s machine, she wanted to present it in the brightest light, so she looked at the machine more abstractly, and as a result, she discovered and imagined what can now be known as the idea of universal computing.
Ada’s works remained unknown for many years. However, in the emerging fields of mathematical logic, this idea of universal computation resurfaced, most clearly expressed in Alan Turing’s 1936 work. Then, after the creation of electronic computers in the 1940s, it became clear that they had the ability to perform universal calculations, which connected them with Turing’s work.
However, there were suspicions that perhaps some other ways of implementing computers would require other forms of computation. And they lasted until the 1980s, when the concept of universal computing became a universally accepted and stable concept. And at that time, something new appeared, including my work – that universal computing is not just something possible, but very ubiquitous.
And now we know (which is embodied, for example, in the principle of computational equivalence) that a very wide range of systems, and even very simple designs, are capable of performing universal calculations.
A different car did not reach this threshold. But if she is improved a little, she will get such an opportunity. Thus, in retrospect, it does not seem at all surprising that an analytical machine could carry them out.
Today, surrounded by computers and programs, the concept of universal computing seems almost self-evident: of course, we can use programs to calculate whatever we want. But theoretically it is not obvious at all. I think you could say that Ada Lovelace was the first person to see with all clarity what has defined the path of development of our technology and even civilization – the concept of universal computing.
What would have happened if Ada had not had health problems, and if she had been able to successfully complete the project of creating an analytical machine? What would happen after that?
I have no doubt that an analytical engine would have been built. Babbage might have had to revise his drawings a bit, but I’m sure he would have made it work. The contraption would be the size of a railroad locomotive, with about 50,000 moving parts. And there is no doubt that the machine could calculate mathematical tables to 30 or 50 digits, about one result every 4 seconds.
Would they have considered that the machine could be electromechanical rather than purely mechanical? I think so. After all, Charles Wheatstone, who was closely associated with the development of the electric telegraph in the 1830s, was a good friend of theirs. And by transmitting information through electrical wires rather than mechanically through rods, the complexity of the design was greatly reduced, and its reliability (which was a big problem) increased dramatically.
Another important factor in reducing the hardware part of computers is the use of the binary system instead of the decimal system. Would they come to this idea? Leibniz knew about the binary system. And if George Boole had started working with Babbage after their meeting at the Great Exhibition, perhaps they would have come to something. The binary system was not widely popular in the mid-19th century, but was often found in the problems and puzzles that Babbage admired; A prime example was his question about how to make a square of words with the word “bishop” on top and on the sides (the answer to which requires only a few lines of code in the Wolfram Language).
Babbage’s main concept for the Analytical Engine was the automatic creation of mathematical tables and their subsequent printing or output as graphs. He envisioned that these tables would be used by humans, plus he was developing the idea of some libraries of recalculated maps that would be machine-readable versions.
Nowadays, in, say, the Wolfram Language, there is no need to store mathematical tables; you can simply calculate what you need and when you need it. But in Babbage’s time, with his idea of a huge analytical machine, such a thing was simply unthinkable.
OK, but would the Analytical Engine be used for anything other than computing mathematical tables? I think so. Had Ada lived as long as Babbage, she would have found herself in the 1890s, when Herman Hollerith was developing an electromechanical map-based census device (who, by the way, co-founded what later became IBM). . An analytical machine would be able to give much more.
Ada may have realized her idea of using an analytical engine to automatically create algorithmic music. Perhaps the machine would be used to solve the three-body problem; possibly even through simulation. If they had thought of using a binary system, perhaps they would have implemented systems like cellular automata.
Neither Babbage nor Ada ever made a profit from commerce (and, as Babbage insisted, his government contracts only served to pay his engineers, and he himself received nothing). If they developed an analytical engine, would they be able to find a business model to implement it? They would probably sell multiple versions to various government agencies. Perhaps they would create some sort of remote computing service at the service of Victorian science, technology, finance, etc.
But none of this actually happened, and instead Ada died young, the Analytical Engine was never finished, and the potential of computing was not rediscovered until the 20th century.
If you met Babbage, what would he be like? He was, it seems to me, a good interlocutor. Early in life, he was an idealist (“to do everything possible to leave the world wiser than the one I came into”); later he devolved into an almost Dickensian caricature of a hardened old man. He arranged wonderful receptions and attached great importance to connections with the intellectual elite. But, especially in recent years, he spent most of his time alone in his large house, filled with books, articles and unfinished projects.
Babbage was not particularly good at people, and even in his eighties he was childlike in his polemics. He also had problems focusing on any one problem — he was constantly distracted by his new ideas. There was only one major exception—his nearly 50 years of work trying to automate the computing process.
I myself have pursued similar goals (or rather, modern versions of them) in my life (…, Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, Wolfram Language, …), but only for forty years so far. I’m fortunate to live in a time where the technology available makes this much easier to achieve, but every major project I’ve taken on has required extreme focus, tenacity, and leadership to see it through.
So what can be said about Hell? First of all, this is a clearly teaching and clearly thinking person. She came from an upper-class background, but didn’t wear particularly fashionable clothes, and was much less a stereotypical countess than an intellectual. She was an adult and emotionally mature person; perhaps more mature than Babbage, and seems to have had a good applied understanding of people and the world around them.
Like Babbage, she was rich and did not need to work to support herself. But she was ambitious and wanted to do something herself. I think that behind the mask of a lady from the high society of the Victorian era, there was some kind of nerd with mathematical jokes and other attributes. She was also very focused and persistent, spending, for example, several months writing her notes.
In mathematics, she successfully reached the level of knowledge of those times; probably on par with Babbage. However, we do not know, unlike the situation with Babbage, exactly what she did in mathematics, so it is difficult to judge her level; Babbage was respectable, if unremarkable.
When you read Ada’s letters, you get the impression of an intelligent, complex person who has clear logical thinking. Her speeches are often covered with Victorian courtesies, but beneath them are hidden clear and often strong ideas.
Ada was clearly aware of her position in society, and that she was “Lord Byron’s daughter.” In a way, her success story is based on her ambition and willingness to try new things. (I can’t stop comparing her as the lead engineer on the Analytical Engine to Lord Byron leading the Greek army). But I also suspect that his problems were affecting her. For years, partly due to her mother’s influence, she shied away from things like poetry. Her eye was drawn to abstract things, not just mathematics and science, but also to more metaphysical realms.
And, it seems, she concluded that her best application would be work in the union of the scientific and the metaphysical – perhaps this is exactly what she called “poetic science”. Apparently, her self-reproduction was correct. After all, in a sense, this is exactly what she was doing: taking the engineering part developed by Babbage, she created an abstract, “metaphysical” concept that gave us our first idea of the idea of universal computing.
The story of Ada and Babbage has many interesting moments. This is a story about the meeting of technical skill with a broad abstract vision. This is a story about friendship between an old man and a young man. This is the story of people who had the courage to be original and creative.
It is also a tragedy. A tragedy for Babbage, who lost so many people in his life, and whose personality pushed others away and prevented him from realizing his ambitions. Tragedy for Ada, who had just found her life’s work, when her health deteriorated.
We will never know what Ada could have done. Another Mary Somerville – famous interpreter of Victorian science? A kind of Steve Jobs, who shapes the vision of the analytical machine? Or Alan Turing, who understands the abstract idea of universal computing?
That Ada touched on what would become the defining idea of our time was a stroke of luck. Babbage did not understand what he was dealing with; Pekla saw glimpses and successfully described them.
For some people, myself in particular, the story of Ada and Babbage has a special resonance. Like Babbage, I have spent most of my life pursuing specific goals, although, unlike Babbage, I have managed to achieve some of them. And, I suspect, like Ada, I have been given glimpses of some significant ideas of the future.
But the challenge is to “be Hell” enough to understand what’s coming, or at least “find that Hell” that understands. At least now, I think I have an understanding of what Ada was like when she was born 200 years ago: a worthy person on the way to universal computing, present and future advances in computational thinking.
It was very nice to meet you, Ada.
