Ada Lovelace: Biography

Childhood

Ada was born Augusta Ada Byron on 10 December 1815, the child of the poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, and his wife, Anne Isabella "Annabella" Milbanke, Baroness Byron. Byron, and many of those who knew Byron, expected that the baby would be "the glorious boy", and there was some disappointment at the contrary news. She was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called "Ada" by Byron himself.

Ada, aged four

On 16 January 1816, Annabella, at Byron's behest, left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory taking one-month-old Ada with her. Although English law gave fathers full custody of their children in cases of separation, Byron made no attempt to claim his parental rights but did request that his sister keep him informed of Ada’s welfare. On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later. An acrimonious divorce followed, with allegations of immoral behaviour against Byron that Annabella would continue to make throughout her life. This would make Ada famous in Victorian society. Byron did not have a relationship with his daughter; he died in 1824, when she was eight. Her mother was the only significant parental figure in her life. Ada would not even be able to view any portrait of her father until her twentieth birthday. Her mother became Baroness Wentworth in her own right in 1856.
Annabella did not have a close relationship with the young Ada and would often leave her in the care of her grandmother Judith Milbanke, who doted on her. However, due to the social attitudes of the time – which favoured the husband in any separation, with the welfare of any child acting as mitigation – Annabella had to present herself as a loving mother to the rest of society. This included writing anxious letters to Judith about Ada’s welfare, with a cover note saying to retain the letters in case she had to use them to show maternal concern. In one letter to Judith, she referred to Ada as “it”: “I talk to it for your satisfaction, not my own, and shall be very glad when you have it under your own.” In her teenaged years, Ada was watched by several close friends of her mother for any signs of moral deviation; Ada dubbed them “the Furies” and would later complain that they had exaggerated and invented stories about her.

Ada, aged seventeen, 1832

Ada was often ill, dating from her early childhood. At the age of eight, she experienced headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralysed after a bout of the measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831 she was able to walk with crutches.
Throughout her illnesses, she continued her education. Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Lord Byron was one of the reasons that she was taught mathematics from an early age. Ada was privately schooled in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King and Mary Somerville. One of her later tutors was the noted mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan. From 1832, when she was seventeen, her remarkable mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life. In a letter to Lady Byron, De Morgan suggested that her daughter's skill in mathematics could lead her to become "an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence".
In early 1833, Ada had an affair with a tutor and, after being caught, tried to elope with him. The tutor’s relatives recognised her and contacted her mother; the incident was covered up by Annabella and her friends to prevent a public scandal.
Ada never met her younger half-sister, Allegra Byron, daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont, who died in 1822 at the age of five. She did, however, have some contact with Elizabeth Medora Leigh, the daughter of Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh. Augusta Leigh purposely avoided Ada as much as possible when she was introduced at Court.

Adult years

Ada developed a strong relationship with Mary Somerville, noted researcher and scientific author of the 19th century, who introduced her to Charles Babbage on 5 June 1833. She had a strong respect and affection for Somerville and the two of them would correspond for many years. Other acquaintances were Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Charles Dickens and Michael Faraday.
Throughout her life, Ada was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including phrenology and mesmerism. Even after her famous work with Babbage, Ada continued to work on other projects. In 1844, she would comment to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings (“a calculus of the nervous system”), though she would never achieve this: in part, this was due to a long-running preoccupation, inherited from her mother, about her 'potential' madness. As part of her research into this project, she visited electrical engineer Andrew Crosse in 1844 to learn how to carry out electrical experiments.In the same year, she wrote review of a paper by Baron Karl von Reichenbach, ‘’Researches on Magnetism’’, but this was not published and does not appear to have progressed past the first draft. In 1851, the last year before her cancer struck, she wrote to her mother mentioning “certain productions” she was working on regarding the relation of maths and music.
By 1834, Ada was a regular at Court and started attending various events. She danced often and was able to charm many people and was described by most people as being dainty. However, John Hobhouse, Lord Byron's friend, was the exception and he described her as "a large, coarse-skinned young woman but with something of my friend's features, particularly the mouth". This description followed their meeting on 24 February 1834 in which Ada made it clear to Hobhouse that she did not like him, probably due to the influence of her mother, which led her to dislike all of her father's friends. This first impression was not to last, and they later became friends.

Portrait by Margaret Sarah Carpenter

On 8 July 1835 she married William King, 8th Baron King, becoming Baroness King. Their residence was a large estate at Ockham Park, in Ockham, Surrey, along with another estate on Loch Torridon and a home in London. They spent their honeymoon at Worthy Manor in Ashley Combe near Porlock Weir, Somerset. The Manor had been built as a hunting lodge in 1799 and was improved by King in preparation for their honeymoon. It later became their summer retreat and was further improved during this time. The house was built on a small plateau in woodland overlooking the Bristol Channel and surrounded by terraced gardens in the Italian style.
They had three children; Byron born 12 May 1836, Anne Isabella (called Annabella, later Lady Anne Blunt) born 22 September 1837 and Ralph Gordon born 2 July 1839. Immediately after the birth of Annabella, Lady King experienced "a tedious and suffering illness, which took months to cure". In 1838, her husband was created Earl of Lovelace. Thus, she was styled "The Right Honourable the Countess of Lovelace" for most of her married life. In 1843-4, William Benjamin Carpenter was assigned by Anabella to teach Ada’s children, as well as to act as a ‘moral’ instructor for Ada. He quickly fell for her and encouraged her to express any frustrated ‘affections’, claiming that his marriage would mean he’d never act in an “unbecoming” manner; when it became clear that Carpenter was trying to start an affair, Ada cut it off.
In 1841, Ada and Medora Leigh (daughter of Lord Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh) were told by the former's mother that Byron, her father, was also Medora's father. On 27 February 1841, Ada wrote to her mother: "I am not in the least astonished. In fact you merely confirm what I have for years and years felt scarcely a doubt about, but should have considered it most improper in me to hint to you that I in any way suspected".^[35] Ada did not blame the incestuous relationship on Byron, but instead blamed Augusta Leigh: "I fear she is more inherently wicked than he ever was".^[36] This did not prevent Ada's mother from attempting to destroy her daughter's image of her father, but instead drove her to attack Byron's image with greater intensity.
In the 1840s, Ada would flirt with scandals: first from a relaxed relationship with men who weren’t her husband, which led to rumours of affairs; and second her love of gambling, which led to her forming a syndicate with her male friends and an ambitious attempt in 1851 to create a mathematical model for successful large bets. This went disastrously wrong, leaving her thousands of pounds in debt and being blackmailed by one of the syndicate, forcing her to admit her mess to her husband. Ada also had a shadowy, possibly illicit relationship with Andrew Crosse’s son John from 1844 onwards. Few hard facts are known because Crosse destroyed most of their correspondence after her death as part of a legal agreement; however, it was strong enough that she bequeathed him the only heirlooms her father had personally left to her. During her final illness, Ada would panic at the idea of John Crosse being kept from visiting her.

Charles Babbage

Ada Lovelace met and corresponded with Charles Babbage on many occasions, including socially and in relation to Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. They first met through their mutual friend Mary Somerville; Ada became fascinated with his Difference Engine and used her relationship with Somerville to visit him as often as she could. In later years, she became acquainted with Babbage’s Italian friend Fortunato Prandi, an associate of revolutionaries.
Babbage was impressed by Ada's intellect and writing skills. He called her "The Enchantress of Numbers". In 1843 he wrote of her:

Forget this world and all its troubles and if
possible its multitudinous Charlatans – every thing
in short but the Enchantress of Numbers.^[42]

During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Ada translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's memoir on Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes.^[43] Explaining the Analytical Engine’s function was a difficult task, as even other scientists did not really grasp the concept and the British establishment was uninterested in it.^[44] Ada’s notes had to even explain how the Engine differed from the original Difference Engine.^[45] The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include (Section G), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine been built (the first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002). Based on this work, Ada is now widely credited with being the first computer programmer and her method is recognised as the world's first computer program. Her work was well received at the time: Michael Faraday would describe himself as a fan of her writing.
Babbage and Ada had a minor falling out when the papers were published, when he tried to leave his own statement (a criticism of the government’s treatment of his Engine) as an unsigned preface – which would imply she’d written that too. When ‘’Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs’’ ruled that the statement should be signed, Babbage wrote to Ada asking her to withdraw the paper. This was the first she knew he was leaving it unsigned and she wrote back refusing to withdraw the paper. Historian Benjamin Woolley has theorised that “his actions suggested he had so enthusiastically sought Ada’s involvement, and so happily indulged her... because of her ‘celebrated name’”.
Their friendship would recover after this and they continued to correspond. In August 12, 1851, when she was dying of cancer, Ada wrote to him asking him to be her executor, though this letter did not give him the necessary legal authority.
Part of the terrace at Worthy Manor was known as "Philosopher's Walk", as it was there that Ada and Babbage were reputed to have walked discussing mathematical principles.

Death

Ada Lovelace died at the age of thirty-six, on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer probably exacerbated by bloodletting by her physicians. The illness lasted several months, in which time Annabella would take command over whom Ada saw, and excluded all of her friends and confidants. Under her mother’s influence, she had a religious transformation (after previously being a materialist) and was coaxed into repenting of her previous conduct and making Annabella her executor. Contact was lost with her husband after she confessed something to him on 30 August, causing him to abandon her bedside; what she told him is not known but has been theorised as a confession of adultery.
She was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham.