Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the notorious poet Lord Byron, did not follow in her father’s literary footsteps. Instead, she is remembered today as a trailblazer for women in science. At a time when women's access to education was limited, she was able to use her wealth and title to connect with the greatest scientific minds of her day. But as well as possessing an impressive intellect, Ada Lovelace lived an unusual life, experiencing her fair share of scandal, heartbreak and near ruin. So how did the circumstances of her parentage and upbringing shape her character? How was she able to pursue her scientific ambitions, despite society’s constraints? And how did her fascination with mathematics lead her to financial disaster? This is a Short History Of Ada Lovelace. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Dr Corin Throsby, a writer, broadcaster, and expert in Romantic literature who teaches at the University of Cambridge. Written by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by George Tapp | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact Check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:48Speaker 02

  It is mid-March 1834. In an elegant London drawing room, a drinks party is in full swing. The house is owned by Charles Babbage, a middle-aged man with sparse sideburns. Though usually somber and serious, tonight he is all smiles as he moves through the throng, refilling glasses and laughing at jokes. It is a typical Saturday evening at one of his soirees. Compared to other London parties, though, the guest list is unusual. Among the cream of society, women in bright silk evening dresses, wealthy men in well-cut suits and crisp white shirts, there are also plenty of thinkers and researchers,

• 1:33Speaker 02

  people who share his passion for mathematics and science. Babbage turns as a familiar voice calls his name, Mary Somerville, a close friend and distinguished scientist. She makes her way across the room towards him, closely followed by a young woman of perhaps 18 with a mass of dark curls and large expressive eyes. Mary introduces her as Ada, daughter of Annabella Lady Byron. Babbage nods in recognition. They met last year when she visited with her mother, but he is pleased to make her acquaintance once again. Offering his arm, Babbage leads Ada across the room to introduce her to another charming young woman.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  This one, though, is a metal automaton, 12 inches high, with a small silver bird perched on her outstretched finger. He has dressed her in the latest fashions and asks Ada to suggest what color turban she should wear next time. Most young women are enchanted by his silver lady, but Ada is uninterested. Clearing her throat, she tells him that what she really wants to see is his calculating machine. She first saw it when she visited previously and has been thinking about it ever since. Babbage raises an eyebrow. It is an unusual request from an aristocratic teenager, but he's willing to indulge her. He leads her out into the hallway with Mary following close behind,

• 3:00Speaker 02

  their footsteps sounding on the polished wooden floor. When he comes to a large wooden door, he pauses dramatically for a moment before throwing it open, revealing his inner sanctum.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Standing pride of place on a table in the middle is a small part of the calculating machine he has designed: the difference engine. A little under a meter tall, it is entirely made of precision-engineered metal pieces. Ada carefully examines the three columns of shining brass cogs and wheels inscribed with numbers. Eventually, Babbage tells her, it will be able to perform quite complex calculations, if he can get more funding, that is. But his bitterness is soon erased when Ada turns and asks if he will explain to her in greater detail how it works. He is more than happy to oblige this unusual young woman.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Pulling out a sheaf of papers from a drawer, he lays them on his desk and launches into his customary explanation. As he talks, she peppers him with questions, and his heart swells. No one has been quite so infused by his ideas in a very long time.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the notorious poet Lord Byron, did not follow in her father's literary footsteps. Instead, she is remembered today as a trailblazer for women in science, arguably the first person to describe a computer program. Through her collaboration with the pioneering mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, Lovelace ventured further than any of her contemporaries in imagining the ways computing could and would shape the modern world. At a time when women's access to education was limited, she was able to use her wealth and title to connect with the greatest scientific minds of her day.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  But as well as possessing an impressive intellect, Ada Lovelace lived an unusual life, experiencing her fair share of scandal, heartbreak and near ruin. So how did the circumstances of her parentage and upbringing shape her character? How was she able to pursue her scientific ambitions despite society's constraints? And how did her fascination with mathematics lead to financial disaster? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of Ada Lovelace.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Ada Lovelace's sensational biography begins before she is born, with her parents' turbulent marriage. Dr. Corinne Throsby is a writer, broadcaster and expert in romantic literature who teaches at the University of Cambridge.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Ada's mother, whose name was Anne Isabella Milbank, because she was known as Annabella. She was a charitable, upstanding educational reformer and a gifted mathematician who was motivated by Christian values and a belief in the power of reason and education. And Ada's father, Lord Byron, was a romantic poet, a huge celebrity surrounded by scandal his entire life and seen as one of history's ultimate bad boys. They did have a few things in common. They were both aristocrats, although I should say Annabella's family had considerably more money than Byron's. And they were both fiercely intelligent,

• 6:45Speaker 03

  but otherwise this was very much a case of opposites attract.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  The unlikely pair meet in 1812 at the home of Lady Caroline Lamb, who is both Annabella's cousin by marriage and Byron's mistress. At the time, Annabella is doing what every young aristocratic woman must do: looking for a husband. She and Byron soon strike up a relationship. She hopes she might be the one to mend his rakish ways, while he sees marriage to a good woman as his only hope of salvation. And though their letters demonstrate a genuine affection and intellectual connection, his reckless spending habits have led him into financial difficulties. So courting a wealthy heiress is a practical move as well.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  He proposes in October 1812, and though Annabella rejects him, they remain in intermittent contact. Complicating matters is Byron's unusual closeness to his half-sister Augusta, a few years his senior. The two had only come to properly know each other as adults, and it appears that around this time, they begin an affair, maybe even having a daughter together. Nonetheless, in September 1814, he proposes again to Annabella, and she accepts. The next day, he and Augusta carve their names into a tree on his estate. It is an inauspicious start to his and Annabella's lives together.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Annabella and Byron marry in January 1815 in an understated ceremony at her family estate. Annabella swiftly falls pregnant, and the relationship deteriorates.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  The marriage was pretty much a disaster right from the beginning. Byron jokes that his marriage bed was surrounded by red curtains, and he told a friend that he felt like he was waking up in hell on his first day of married life. And their relationship was marked by mood swings on Byron's side and increasing despair on Annabella's side.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  He is abusive and cruel and issues frequent threats, even as she struggles through a difficult first pregnancy. Augusta comes to live with them in their London home, and even she becomes concerned for the safety of her lover's wife. Annabella, for her part, seems to think her husband's unstable moods and angry outbursts are a sign of illness. At one point, she goes so far as to visit a doctor, expressing her concern about what she fears is her husband's derangement.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Their daughter, named Augusta Ada Byron, but known as Ada, is born on the 10th of December 1815. Byron's abusiveness only worsens, and soon the new mother has had enough.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  They separated after the birth of Ada. This is when Ada was only five weeks old. And this was very customary at the time for a mother to take her baby to her parents' home, which is exactly what Annabella did, which she did with Byron's blessing. But this turned into a separation. And as more and more scandals surrounded Byron, he ended up needing to leave the UK, to leave England in 1816, when Ada was only a number of months old. And they weren't to know then that he would actually never return to England.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Safely back with her parents, Annabella writes down a statement of her husband's abuses, which her mother takes to a lawyer in London. Though they do not divorce, Byron agrees to a separation and never attempts to take custody of Ada. His notoriety means that few people blame Annabella for seeking an end to the relationship.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  I should say that this scandal played out to a burgeoning gossip media. This was absolutely the tabloid fodder of its time. And at that time, public sympathy was actually largely with Lady Byron, with Annabella. So everyone knew what had happened, knew that her husband was a complete scoundrel, and so they were sympathetic with her.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Thanks to the safety net of her wealth and family, once Byron leaves the country, Annabella is free to raise their daughter alone.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Despite her chaotic start to life, Ada's childhood is in many ways idyllic. A voracious reader, she spends much of her time at her doting grandparents' country house in Leicestershire, and is often in the company of her mother's circle of intelligent, educated women. A letter describing her to her absent father gives a sense of her personality.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  What we have is a really lovely little portrait of Ada, and she says, "Her prevailing characteristic is cheerfulness and good temper. Observation, not devoid of imagination, but it is chiefly exercised in connection with her mechanical ingenuity, the manufacture of ships and boats, etc. Prefers prose to verse."

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Ada is growing up in a time when only 10% of the British population receive formal schooling, though obviously the figure is much higher among the gentry.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  When aristocratic young women are educated, the focus is on the humanities and skills such as needlework. There is a genuine belief that the female constitution is too delicate to handle the intellectual rigors of science and maths. Luckily for Ada, her grandparents and mother are more progressive.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Annabella had herself received a very good education and was extremely keen for her daughter to also be very well educated. So she got a very solid mathematical education, and maths was indeed her passion that she wanted to pass on to her daughter. There was also a sense that she was keen for Ada not to grow up like her father, and one of the ways in which she did this was by shielding Ada from the poetic side of life and urging her more towards the mathematical and scientific way.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  And there's kind of a sense that Ada was pretty much hothoused as a young child, having sort of quite intense tutoring. But Ada was an amazing student and a very, very keen learner from a very early age.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Annabella's desire to give her daughter the best education money can buy is aided by a series of inheritances, which provide her with a vast fortune. As well as paying for tutors and governesses, she also founds her own schools and makes a name for herself as an education reformer with a keen interest in the abolition of slavery.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  In 1824, Lord Byron dies in Greece while preparing a military expedition in support of its liberation from Ottoman rule. Though some accounts suggest his dying thoughts are of his estranged daughter, he leaves her nothing, with his title passing to a male family member and the family home already sold.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  A year later, Ada and Annabella move to a house just outside Canterbury in Kent, and Ada receives a new governess, Miss Charlotte Stamp. In the summer of 1826, the trio take a trip around Europe. But despite her blessings, there are dark spots too, one of which is her mother's health, though records are ambiguous as to the cause and symptoms of her complaints.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Her mother was often away, and we can only think now Annabella had gone through an incredibly traumatic marriage, birth, and divorce, kind of all in the space of a really short time, and suffered from ill health, and so was often going away to spa towns for health treatments when Ada was small.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  After their European voyage, Annabella has another attack of the illness that continues to plague her, and Ada seems to genuinely fear for her life. While Annabella tours various spa towns seeking a cure, the 11-year-old Ada distracts herself with a new obsession.

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• 16:35Speaker 02

  It is an early morning in April 1828, and the sky is still washed with the pale pink of dawn. In a solid two-story manor house located just outside of Canterbury, 12-year-old Ada Byron sits staring out of the window.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  But she is not daydreaming, watching clouds, or admiring the glint of the sunlight on the iridescent feathers of the magpies outside her window. She is studying hard.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Specifically, she is observing the mechanics of bird flight. Every few seconds, she bends her head to the page on the desk in front of her and adds more lines to her sketch. Her brow creases in concentration as she tries to recreate the exact shapes and movements of the magpies' wings as they fly.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  She is interrupted by a strange crunching noise that seems to be coming from the direction of the bed. Approaching tentatively, she gets down onto her hands and knees, peering into the gloom beneath, and sees the yellow eyes of her cat, Mistress Puff, glaring back at her.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  But then she realizes what her pet is eating. Yesterday, one of the gardeners had brought Ada a freshly deceased blackbird, knowing how keen she would be to study its anatomy. Indignantly, she now reaches under the bed, grabbing the cat around her middle and dragging her away from her illicit meal, even as she yowls and hisses.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  The pair are disturbed by a knock at the door. Ada's governess, Miss Stamp, pokes her head in, but quickly steps out of the way when a furious Mistress Puff barrels out of the room, a fluffy fur standing on end.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Ada laughs at her cat's antics before turning her attention to her governess, who tells her that the book she had asked her mother for has arrived. It's in the schoolroom.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Ada jumps up excitedly and hurries out of the room and down the grand staircase where the golden light streams in through the large windows at the front of the house.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Then, banging open the door to the schoolroom, she finds a slim leather-bound volume lying on the table.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  She rifles through the pages, exclaiming in delight at every detailed scientific illustration contained within. It is exactly the book on bird anatomy that she wanted.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Still holding the treasure, Ada charges back upstairs. She needs to find some big sheets of waxed paper and then see whether the spare stable has been cleared out yet. Armed with the knowledge in this book, her experiments can truly begin.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Many young children dream of flying, but Ada takes the idea so particularly seriously.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  She became fascinated with the idea of flying, and there's another letter actually that she wrote excitedly at that time, where she talks about making paper wings and that she will write a book of flyology, and she was going to, I think she says, she was able to bring the art of flying to a very great perfection. And that morphed into the idea of creating a flying horse that was powered by a steam engine, and then she would ride on its back. So yeah, these really wonderful, fantastical ideas that she'd get completely obsessed with.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  But Ada's teenage years are blighted by long bouts of serious illness.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  When she was 13, she had a bout of measles, and this was followed, probably not directly related, but she then had nearly three years of semi-paralysis. And so you can only imagine her being bedbound and only having books and her thoughts to keep her company.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Though the exact cause of the temporary paralysis remains a mystery, it means that Ada spends much of her teenage years in bed, or only able to walk with crutches. When she is finally well again, she is anxious to make up for lost time. She learns to ride horses and is presented to the king and queen as part of the London social season. She begins to spend more time with her peers, and for the first time, she falls in love.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Ada had an affair with one of her young tutors, and there was a moment where her mother thought she might elope, and it was all sort of very dramatic, and there was a big effort then to kind of rein Ada in once again and bring her back to studies and respectability, because again, there's this danger that maybe she would end up like her father.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  The tutor, William Turner, is only a couple of years older than his 16-year-old pupil. Their elopement is foiled when Ada turns up at his parents' home, only for them to send her back to her mother. Anxious for something to tame her daughter's wild spirits, Annabella finds the answer is the same as it had been during her childhood: the study of mathematics.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  For her part, however, Ada is currently more interested in learning about physics, especially astronomy and optics. Around this time, she begins to be tutored by Mary Somerville, an acquaintance of her mother's. A mathematician and astronomer, Somerville will soon publish her book on the connection of the physical sciences, which will become one of the best-selling texts of its kind in the 19th century. Against the odds, she somehow manages to create a scientific career for herself, despite strong patriarchal headwinds.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  It was genuinely believed that women were not able to think through mathematical and scientific problems. This was changing, you know, as pioneers like Mary Somerville, and I should say that Mary Somerville was in fact the first person to be described as a scientist. That word was coined in relation to her. She was a really, truly eminent and amazing figure. So, things were changing, you know, she was allowed to become a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, even if she wasn't allowed inside the building. There was tiny amounts of progress being made.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Mary begins to tutor Ada informally at her mother's request. And it is through her that Ada meets the man who will have the greatest impact on her scientific career.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Babbage was a brilliant mathematician, philosopher and engineer. He was around the same age as Annabella, Ada's mother. And he was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical Society. And he was famous for holding soirees at his home in London every Saturday evening. And these were attended by the intellectual elite of the time. And I love imagining how exciting it must have been for teenage Ada to come to such a glamorous gathering of the greatest minds of the day. And a woman in this circle actually joked that to gain entry to these parties, you needed either beauty, rank or intellect.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  And Ada had all three. And so she really sort of fitted in in this group and really felt like she'd found her people.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  When Ada meets Babbage, he is a decade into working on a hand-cranked computing machine, which he has named the Difference Engine.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  It is essentially a giant calculator that can make and print tables of logarithms and calculations to be used by physicists, engineers, or those involved in navigation.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Remember, this is the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, where production is becoming increasingly mechanized. And in this, lots of numbers needed to be crunched. And at this time, they had what they called computers. But in the 19th century, computers were actually people. These were people who were doing these calculations. And of course, people make mistakes. So Babbage started to wonder if he could create a machine to do these calculations instead.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Though the British government has invested a large sum of money into the project, Babbage has yet to build more than a small part of his planned machine.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  But Ada is captivated by what she sees of the engine, and is soon in regular correspondence with him. That summer, she and Annabella embark on a tour of various factories, seeing a number of technological innovations, including new looms from France. It might be a somewhat unusual mother-daughter holiday, but Ada revels in the experience.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Though she hopes fostering an interest in maths and technology will help curb her daughter's impulsive nature, Annabella also has an eye on what the marriage market has to offer. As Ada approaches 20, her mother and Mary Somerville find what they believe to be the perfect match.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  Mary Somerville's son had gone to Cambridge with a fellow student called Lord William King, who was 10 years older than Ada. He was well-educated, and for a while, he was actually a diplomat in Corfu. And the reason why he was in Greece was because he was a massive Byron fan. He was very intrigued to meet Byron's daughter, and he was, as deemed by Mary Somerville and Annabella, Ada's mother, a fantastic match in that he was intellectual, he was into mathematics and science, and he was keen on Ada.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  In the late spring of 1835, Ada is sent to a ball so that she and William King can become acquainted. They are both instantly smitten. Within a week, he has proposed, and a few months later, they are married. Their two-month honeymoon takes place at King's west-country estate, after which they divide their time between London and his main residence in Surrey. He is a wealthy man with an income of £8,000 a year, equivalent to the best part of a million today. The even wealthier Annabella considers it sufficient but not ample, and gifts the new couple a massive £30,000.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  There seems little doubt that this is a love match, and the couple's affection is apparent in their letters. By October, Ada is pregnant, and she gives birth to their son Byron in May 1836. The name, perhaps surprisingly, is chosen by Annabella, who now looks back on her marriage with a somewhat rose-tinted nostalgia.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Little Byron is followed in 1837 by a daughter, named for Annabella, and a second boy, Ralph, in 1839. The whole family gets a new name in 1838, when William becomes Earl Lovelace. Ada Byron, who became Ada King, is now officially Ada, Countess Lovelace.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Still, in her early twenties, Ada is not always the most devoted mother. The children are often left with Annabella, or in the care of nannies and governesses, as is usual among the aristocracy of the time.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  I would describe her as a mostly loving but largely absent wife and mother. Certainly, there's quite a lovely picture of their early days as a little family, that they were very close, they all had cute nicknames for each other, they really enjoyed spending time with each other. But as time went on, Ada was away more and more. Like her mother, she also suffered from ill health throughout her life, or had these sort of periods of needing time away.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Despite her change in family circumstances, the new Countess of Lovelace does not lose sight of her interest in science. She finds a new tutor in renowned mathematician Augustus de Morgan. Ten years, Ada's senior, at the age of just 22, he was made the University of London's first professor of mathematics. Ada also follows in her mother's footsteps and develops an interest in educational reform. She draws up plans for a school on her own estate, where working-class children can receive a rounded education and learn a trade, enlisting her learned friends to help write the teaching manuals.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  But these various pursuits all pull her away from her own children.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  At this point, Ada is, for example, an amazing harpist. She is a really talented singer, she knows several languages fluently, she's also starting to think brilliantly about science, and is being tutored by some of the most eminent scientists of the day. I would say all of this, her children are relatively low down in the ranks of priorities.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Soon Ada's attention is once again captured by a project of Charles Babbage's. Despite the fact that the Difference Engine has still not been built, and he is largely seen as a failure by the British government, he begins designing a more complicated and sophisticated computing device.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  This is a machine that was more than a calculator. It could also follow instructions. And he'd been inspired particularly by the hottest technology of the time, which was called the Jacquard loom. And this was a weaving device, invented in France, in which you could put in cards that would give the loom a kind of program to create beautiful patterns of flowers and leaves. So he could see this new technology and was like, I think this could be done with numbers, and that this would be a much more sort of programmable machine, as it were. So it would have been able to perform different calculations, follow sequences of instructions,

• 32:02Speaker 03

  repeat operations, and also kind of make decisions based on results.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Called the Analytical Engine, the steam-powered machine will use punched cards to supply input data and instructions. This data will in turn be processed, with results then supplied on output cards. Babbage includes plans for both a central processing unit and memory storage. Structurally, it includes most of the components of a modern computer.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Ada begs her tutor de Morgan to teach her advanced calculus, so that she can better understand this machine and its operations. In the meantime, she writes letters to Babbage about her desire to assist him with this new project. Her opportunity comes soon enough.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  In 1840, Babbage gives a talk in Turin, Italy, where he describes the analytical engine. In the audience is a military engineer named Count Luigi Menabrea, who will one day become the Italian Prime Minister. In 1842, he publishes an article in French, the dominant language of European science, describing Babbage's ideas. Since the engine is only a concept at this point, Menabrea's article does not dwell on mechanical details. Rather, it describes the functions of the machine, and specifically its purported mathematical and algebraic capabilities. But there is still no publication outlining the plans for the engine in English, and this is where Ada comes in.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Ada Lovelace, Renaissance woman that she is with so many talents, just happened to be fluent in French. And the physicist Charles Wheatstone, who was friends with Babbage, he suggested that Ada would be the perfect person to translate the article for an English audience. So Babbage agreed that Ada would be the best person to not only translate this, but Babbage also suggested that Ada write some notes to accompany the article, to give even more clarity to the public and indeed investors about the potential of this machine. And her notes, in fact, ended up to be nearly three times the length of the original article.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  So her notes just sort of subsumed what had been Babbage's lecture.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  It is these extensive notes on Babbage's plan for the analytical engine that constitute Ada's contribution to computing. In the conclusion to his article, Menabrea had asked, "Who can foresee the consequences of such an invention?" It is this question that the young countess takes up. Her writing explores the importance of Babbage's invention in clear and accessible prose, and lays out the potential of such a machine and its applications going far beyond what its inventor ever envisaged. One particular insight is that the analytical engine could do far more than just produce mathematical data.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  The numbers on the machine, she posits, could represent other forms of information, including letters and musical notes, and therefore generate non-numerical outputs. She suggests, for example, that the machine could compose music according to preset rules. She even includes what many people will come to describe as the first computer program.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  She creates a recipe for how to create Bernoulli numbers. These are a sequence of rational numbers that are really important in mathematics. And her use of Bernoulli numbers is the first explicit example of an algorithm that was specifically tailored to be run by a computer, thereby making it arguably the first computer program. And she created this kind of formula for weaving an algebraic pattern to instruct the machine, a bit like program or software that would then go in and tell the machine what to do.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Ada's notes are published anonymously in late 1843, marked only by the initials A A L. But many in the scientific community are nonetheless aware of the author's identity, and her work is received warmly, even at a time when women are still significantly sidelined in the world of science. Her husband is one of her greatest champions, as is her mother. But their backing is not unconditional.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Her husband was supportive. You know, she continued to have tutors throughout, you know, what would have been a university education and into her kind of twenties. And he was, you know, very supportive of that and funded that. But I should say that even though Annabella, for example, was also encouraging of Ada, there was still, even in these very progressive thinkers, a sense that deep thinking in mathematics and science might harm a woman's body and constitution. And we know that Ada was sick a lot in her life,

• 37:18Speaker 03

  and this was often blamed on her scientific pursuits.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Ada is determined that as the daughter of the celebrated poet Lord Byron, she will leave her own mark on the world and live up to her father's greatness. She hopes these notes will be the foundation of an extensive scientific career and the first of many publications. But in the winter of 1843, her health begins to deteriorate. She experiences chronic pain and headaches and is prescribed Lourdan, which comes with its own raft of side effects. Although she has many ideas to explore in her chosen field, she is unable to fully pursue them, and the notes remain her crowning achievement.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  By the second half of the 1840s, the Lovelaces are facing financial difficulties. William spends much of his money on fantastical renovations to the family estate, while Ada struggles on what feels, to someone of her background, like a rather frugal yearly allowance. Lord Byron had been a notorious overspender, and when she married, Annabella had decided her daughter should be kept on a tight leash in case she took after her profligate father. But from 1846, Ada suddenly has a great need for money.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  There's fairly good evidence that she had at least one affair, and this was with a man called John Cross. He was the son of a scientist called Andrew Cross, and Ada had gone to visit Andrew Cross in their country home because he was doing experiments with lightning. He was very into kind of electricity and harnessing electricity. And she met John Cross there. They developed an intense friendship that was probably more... It's difficult to know because a lot of letters were destroyed after Ada died, which in itself feels somewhat damning that these letters were deemed worthy of destruction. And we also know that she gave a lot of money to John Cross

• 39:34Speaker 03

  through the course of their relationship.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  The generation of more funds feels increasingly necessary. And soon, she comes across something she believes will solve the problem. It is early autumn, 1850. The sky overhead is iron gray, threatening rain, as Ada, Countess of Lovelace, makes her way through the crowd at Doncaster Race Track in the north of England. Her husband holds her arm, steadying her as someone knocks into them. She's only been to the races a few times in her life, and every time, the boisterousness of the crowd surprises her. Ada sees coins changing hands as informal bets are made,

• 40:22Speaker 02

  and many of the men around them seem to have been drinking for several hours. She and William forge a path through the crowd until they stand at the flimsy, white-painted railing that encircles the track. Ada looks over her shoulder to see their friends, the Zetlans, fighting their way through the throng to stand next to them. It is because of these acquaintances and the fact that their horse Voltigeur is racing in today's Doncaster Gold Cup that the Lovelaces are here. The Earl of Zetland points down to the two horses standing at the start of the great pear-shaped track. One beast belongs to him, the other to Lord Eglinton, his greatest rival.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  As they watch, Eglinton's jockey, dressed in a bright blue jacket, takes a huge swig from a glass bottle. He sways slightly, leaning against his horse for support, and struggles slightly as he is helped into the saddle. By contrast, Zetland's jockey, outfitted in bright crimson, mounts smoothly, holding the reins in one hand as he steers Voltigeur to the starting line. Once both riders are in position, the crowd gradually quietens. Soon, all that can be heard is the snorting and whinnying of the horses. Ada observes Voltigeur closely.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Even in the dull gray light of the day, his coat shines. He tosses his head as though eager to begin, his powerful muscles bunching in his chest and hindquarters as he stamps his feet. The jockey reins him in, and he steadies just as a race official raises a tin whistle to his lips. With that, they're off. The crowd surges around Ada for a better view, and she is all but crushed against the barrier. Everyone is suddenly screaming, cheering for one horse or another. The horses make one full circuit of the track and start on another. The clamor of the crowd increases as they draw level on the approach to the finish line. It is literally neck and neck.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Ada clasps her husband's hand tightly in hers, heart beating in her ears as the tension becomes almost unbearable. At the very last second, it is Voltigeur who makes it over the line first. The crowd erupts. Men all around them are patting Zetland on the back, trying to shake his hand to congratulate him on another magnificent win. After basking in the adulation for a few minutes, he ducks under the barricade, walking swiftly across the turf towards his horse and jockey, already shouting his congratulations. William makes to follow him, but Ada puts a hand on his arm to stop him. She has just had a wonderful idea.

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• 44:17Speaker 02

  After attending several horse races with her husband and their friends, Ada revisits a desire to use her mathematical abilities to make some money.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Well, Ada had started to think about the mathematics of gambling in her late twenties. But it wasn't until her mid-thirties, when she was very much embroiled with John Cross, I should say, that she became convinced that she could use her mathematical acumen to outsmart the bookies. And she really hoped that she might be able to win big. Her plan was to collect extensive data on horses and analyze previous performances, identify statistical regularities, and then sort of place carefully calculated bets.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  She gathers together a syndicate of men who contribute funds and place bets according to her direction.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Some are decidedly seedy characters, but at least one is a gentleman, and there is some evidence that Charles Babbage might also be involved.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Though the syndicate does well for a season, everything falls apart in 1851. After a run of disastrous losses at the York and Epsom races, they lose over £3,000, nearly half a million in modern money.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Shortly afterwards, Ada's health, never strong, rapidly worsens.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  Ada's health was very patchy throughout her life. She had digestive problems. She often had eating problems. She had headaches and chronic pain. And then things, when she was around 35, got even worse. She started hemorrhaging, had severe abdominal pain. And it became clear that she would not live and in fact was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus, although now retrospectively historians think that it was probably cervical cancer initially that spread into her uterus as well.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  In this period, there is no cure, and the terminal diagnosis is delivered to William by one of the royal family's physicians.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Though Ada is not yet at death's door, upon receiving the news, he panics. Racing through the night to inform Annabella of the news, he also discloses their financial difficulties and Ada's gambling problem.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  But she is perhaps the last person Ada wants to hear about this.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Her mother was not only anti-gambling, but like genuinely an anti-gambling campaigner. And so Ada knew that she had to hide this from her mother. And remember, her mother also kept Ada on a very strict allowance. I mean, it wasn't unusual then for women to be on it. I mean, it was the norm, in fact, for women to be on an allowance like this. But her mother kept it very small because she didn't want Ada to get too carried away with spending.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Annabella blames William for the couple's money worries. She asks him why he has not come to her sooner and why he has not kept Ada under control.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  The situation strains the relationship between mother and daughter and causes a rift between Annabella and William that never fully heals.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Ada's declining health means she now spends much of her time in their London house in increasing pain. Even in her final months, she is still trying to make her mark on the world of science. Her notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were supposed to be the start of her career as a scientist, not its sum.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  One area she becomes interested in is the study of light, and she starts to correspond with prominent scientists on the matter.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  She became interested in the way raindrops refract the sun's light. And her conversations with Charles Wheatstone, David Brewster, and Michael Faraday at this time sort of suggest that she was anticipating the invention of what's called the spectroscope, which could split light into different colors. And this was invented a bit less than 10 years after her death. So there was a sense that she was anticipating perhaps something with this, but it's all really speculative.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  She also talks of making a study of herself, describing her ailing body as "an experimental laboratory always around me."

• 48:47Speaker 02

  But the cocktail of opiates she takes to manage her pain also make her behave erratically. She continues to gamble and does not always go about finding money in the most sensible of ways.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  She, for example, asked her husband to give her the family diamonds, the Lovelace diamonds, which she then gave to John Cross, who pawned them. And her mother, who was really helping her through this final stage of her life, enabled to cover up, like sort of secretly, so that Ada's husband didn't find out, managed to retrieve these jewels at great cost to herself, returned them to Ada, who then gave them back to John Cross a second time, and he pawned them a second time.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  As her daughter deteriorates, Annabella moves into the house to care for her and takes over the running of the household. Ada finally succumbs in terrible agony on the 27th of November, 1852. She is only 36 years old, the same age Lord Byron had been when he died. At her own request, she is laid to rest in his family vault next to the father she never knew.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Though there is no neat link between Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and the first computers, we know at least some of the 20th-century pioneers were reading Ada's writings. Alan Turing, the famous English mathematician and codebreaker, certainly read her notes on Babbage's work.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  He was particularly interested in Note G, and this is what he called Lady Lovelace's objection. She talked about the limitations, in fact, of the Analytical Engine, saying that it has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. So she was talking here in a way about the fact that you only get into a computer, you only get out what you put in, essentially. So it is sort of calculating things, but it only is with human input. And Alan Turing was sort of fascinated by this particular note. And the fact that he was reading and engaging with Ada's work, that he names a theory after her, was significant.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  So there's a sort of through line there, even if it's not a direct through line from her to modern computing.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Ada Lovelace continues to inspire people to this day and stands as a powerful role model, both for women in science and for computer programmers more generally. A number of awards in maths and computing are named after her. Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated every year in October, intended to raise the profile of women in science. And a programming language originally developed for the United States Department of Defense is named Ada in her honor. It now helps to control everything from Boeing 777 planes to the French high-speed rail network and the UK's air traffic control system. A fitting tribute to the little girl who dreamed of flying.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  For me, the biggest legacy of Ada is this idea that she had, she coined this about her own interest in poetical science, that she was like a walking metaphor as the daughter of a brilliant poet and a gifted mathematician. She brought together the emotion and the reason. It was through her poetical thinking that she was able to see beyond what Charles Babbage could see in his own machine. I really like a quote that she said in a letter. She says, "I do not believe that my father was or ever could have been such a poet

• 52:39Speaker 03

  as I shall be, an analyst and metaphysician. But with me, the two go together indissolubly."

• 52:49Speaker 02

  Next time on Short History of we'll bring you a short history of Betsy the Iceman.

• 52:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's so important because it's really a unique finding. The combination also of his well-preserved body, the presence of all his belongings and tools and clothing and so on puts him in a very special place and gives us so much insight into his time period, how the living conditions were at that time. And especially, he tells us so much also how the interaction of people and their diseases and their environment was. And we can still connect this to our modern period and learn so much through him from the past that maybe could help us also in the future.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  That's next time.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www-noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

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