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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Ada Lovelace. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2012
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini
I usually don’t write
reviews of fiction books, but occasionally I find a
novel so enjoyable, or its subject so interesting or important that I want to
write about it. That is the case with Enchantress
of Numbers, a novel by Jennifer Chiaverini.
The subject is Ada Lovelace, who I think is interesting and
important. She is credited as the author of the first published computer program in 1843. The only thing resembling a computer at the time was in
the drawings and notes of mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, a friend of Lovelace. He called the
device, which was never built, an analytical engine.
Lovelace’s contribution
has been debated, but it seems likely that she saw more capability in the
analytical engine than even its inventor. As she described in her notes on her
translation of a scientific paper on Babbage’s invention, originally printed in
French and shorter than her notes were, she
imagined the device being able to handle all manner of symbolic and logical
functions in addition to solving mathematical equations. Even Babbage himself
seemed mainly to see it as an improvement on his difference engine, a
programmable calculating machine that was partly built, but never finished.
If she had been a man,
her accomplishment would very likely have received much more accolades than it
did at the time, or even for more than a century afterward. It was unusual for
a woman to be even permitted to study math or science in those days. Her mother encouraged
her to take on these fields to discourage her from following in the footsteps
of her father, the poet Lord Byron.
Lovelace lived in a
period of great change in society and science. She was a contemporary of Charles Darwin. She was a friend of Charles Dickens and Michael Faraday. When Queen Victoria was coronated, her husband was
elevated to an earl and the new monarch called her forward to take her hand as
the couple, newly made Count and Countess Lovelace, were took their bows. She
attended the Great Exhibition of 1851, housed in the Crystal Palace, where the exhibits included the
still relatively new telegraph.
I wasn’t sure I would
care for a novelization of Lovelace’s life. I was not especially impressed with
Arthur
and George, Julian Barnes’ novel based on events from the life
of Arthur Conan Doyle; I thought I would have preferred a
straight nonfiction book on the subject. I found
Chiaverini’s novel more compelling, perhaps because it is written as if by Ada
Lovelace herself. As with any such fictionalization, there are parts that
Chiaverini made up, though she draws on sources I enjoyed such as Benjamin Woolley’s excellent biography Bride
of Science and James Essinger’s defense of the countess, Ada’s
Algorithm. I
realize that there are people who will pick up a novel who would not be
attracted to a biography, and if it takes that to get more
people to now about Ada Lovelace an her contributions, then Chiaverini’s effort
was worthy.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger
Ada
Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron,
is arguably one of the first computer
scientists in history.
She wrote what some considered the first computer
program about a century before any computer was built, especially anything we
would recognize as computer. James
Essinger presents a summary of her life, and particularly a defense of her
accomplishments, in Ada’s Algorithm.
In any discussion relating to the Byrons, it’s easy to get distracted
by Lovelace’s father. In addition to being a famous poet, he lived a high life
(often on the money of others) and had many lovers. Lady Byron,
who separated from Byron and preserved her family
wealth
from his extravagances, made sure their only daughter had minimal contact with
him. Lovelace had an education in math
and science very unlike other women of her time because Lady Byron hoped it
might counterbalance any of the excesses the girl may have inherited from the
wild Byrons.
Lovelace took to math quite well. In a later age, she might have become
a professional mathematician. In her own 1800s, her tutors sometimes
complained that she reached too far for a woman, and strove to grasp at realms
of math that only men had the stamina to explore. Fortunately her mother, and
later her husband, William,
Lord King, Baron of Ockham (later elevated to Earl of Lovelace), did not
let such foolishness restrain her mathematical education.
She was still quite young, only 17, when she met the much older Charles
Babbage, inventor of the partly build Difference
Engine and never built Analytical
Engine. The Analytical Engine was a calculating machine that could be
programmed using punch cards. Though it was a mechanical device, not an
electronic computer, Babbage’s structure (processor, memory, input and output)
is the same structure of modern computers. Not only did Babbage conceive of
computers a century before one was built, he drew plans for substantially
completing such a machine, though the manufacturing technology of the time
could not have made the parts required.
Lovelace was a friend of Babbage for many years. In 1843, about 10
years after they met, Lovelace published a paper explaining the operation and
capabilities of Babbage’s machine. She had an even larger vision of it than the
inventor. He saw the Analytical Engine as a tool for performing complex
calculations accurately. She saw that it could do more than mathematical
calculations; it could manipulate any symbols in almost any way instructed, so
it might “compose” music by manipulating notes according so some rules, or
perform logical functions, or handle any other information that might be
digitized. She foresaw that what we now call computer science would become a
discipline distinct from math.
She thought the paper might be better received if it was unsigned, but
at the encouragement of her husband she published it under her initials. It was
quickly discovered that “A. A. L.” was a woman, and almost a quickly dismissed
as irrelevant. It wasn’t until the 20th
Century, when people were actually building digital computers, that the
work of Babbage and Lovelace received some respect. Though modern computers do
not have a technological connection to the Analytical Engine that was never
built, it certainly has a strong conceptual connection.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Essinger, James. Ada’s Algorithm:
How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age. 2013.
Brooklyn: Melville House, 2014.
Friday, December 21, 2012
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