How Ada Lovelace Constructed Her Wings

Lord Byron. This is another episode that is not actually about Lord Byron himself, but I'm sure he would be pleased to know we're going to begin by talking about him yet again. Bye. In eighteen fifteen, the sixth Baron Byron had made quite the name for himself. Outside of his inherited title, he was famous in England and across the continent for both his literary and romantic exploits. It was Byromania, as dubbed by Caroline Lamb's cousin, Annabella Millbank.

Annabella was the daughter of a baronet and a poet herself. She asked her cousin to pass along some of her work to Caroline's famous Fling, and when she did, Caroline suggested to Byron that Annabella might actually make a good wife for him. Despite Byron's passion and reputation for sleeping his way through the men and women of London society, Byron needed to settle down ideally with an heiress to

remedy his growing debt, and so he courted Annabella. Annabella had a reputation for being strict, chilly, and moral, which made her a very odd match for the loose, sociable, and decidedly less moral poet. He is a very bad, very good man, Annabella once allegedly told her mother. When Byron proposed, she first said no, writing him a summary of his character to dictate exactly why. But eventually Annabella's mind was changed and she said yes. Unfortunately, her first

instinct was the correct one. The marriage was doomed from the start. In Annabella's twelve months married to Byron, she endured abuse from her husband, constant harassment from his creditors, and to top it all off, she would suffer the human aliation of hearing that Byron was cheating on her with his own half sister, Augusta Lee. Despite their problems,

the couple managed to have one child together. Byron had expected a quote glorious boy and was initially disappointed when Annabella gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Aida, named after yes, exactly the half sister you might be thinking of. Ada was born on December tenth, eighteen fifteen, and about a month later, in the early hours of January sixteenth, Annabella took her infant daughter from the home she shared with Byron and left the marriage. Byron would never see his

wife or his daughter again. As Annabella raised her daughter on her own, she was worried that Aida would inherit her father's poetic madness, and so she did discouraged imaginative and literary pursuits, instead fostering a discipline for arithmetic and logic. Ada would grow up to work with the mathematician Charles Babbage on his proposed automatic computer, the Analytical Engine, and she understood the potential of the project in ways even

her mentor did not. Ada wrote, quote, A new, a vast and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis in which to wield its truths, so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means throw in our possession have rendered possible. Thus, not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and

effective connection with each other. What Ada was recognizing was the language and application of a computer beyond basic computing, and today she is recognized by the scientific community as the first computer programmer. It was, as she called it, her approach of quote poetical science that allowed her to recognize the potential of the relationship and communication between humans and machines. In the end, Ada Lovelace's father's imagination and

her mother's logic would produce a pioneer. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Is the girl imaginative? Is she social or solitary? Taciturn or talkative? Fond of reading or otherwise? And what is her tick? I mean her foible? Is she passionate? I hope that Gods have made her anything save poetical? It is enough to have one such fool in the family. These are the words of Byron in a letter to his half sister, asking about his daughter Ada back in England while he was self exiled abroad.

Before Byron departed, he signed the deed of separation that both effectively ended his marriage and gave Annabella full custody of their daughter Ada, a rarity for the time. The accusations against Byron of both sodomy and incest that were spreading through England put Byron in no position to argue for his parental rights. His only request was that Augusta, his half sister, be allowed to keep him informed of Ada's well being after he left the continent through Augusta.

Annabella replied to her stranged husband, quote 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, et cetera, prefers prose to verse. These letters were written between the end of eighteen twenty three and the beginning of eighteen twenty four,

when Ada was seven and eight. Annabella's letter would never receive a reply because Lord Byron died in Greece in April of eighteen twenty four. He never saw his daughter or, as he once called her, the Electra of my Mycenaea. Ever again, Aida only knew of her father's passing vaguely, and she knew next to nothing about him as a man or historical figure until much later in life. Back when Annabella had separated from Byron in early eighteen te teen sixteen, she had taken Aida to her parents' home

in Leicestershire, which was where she would be raised. Annabella's parents had recognized their daughter's intelligence at a young age, and they had hired a Cambridge professor to tutor her. In turn, Annabella began her own daughter's education when she

was four years old. Annabella apparently possessed an Emily Gilmore like tendency to fire tutors and governesses often if they did not meet her expectations for her daughter's education, and in the interim stretches between employees, she took charge of AIDA's education herself. A system was applied to AIDA's education that is not totally dissimilar from something you might see

in a children's school today. AIDA's good behavior, like paying attention, applying herself to her lessons, and sitting still, was rewarded with a ticket. Sitting still was the trickiest part for young AGNs Aida. One of her early governesses, Miss Lamont, wrote that her young charge reminded her of a reindeer dashing about tickets could be confiscated when Aida did not

meet her mother's expectations. When that same governess ultimately left her posts, she reflected quote, no person can be more rational, companionable, and endearing than this rare child, before adding that Aida would do almost anything to win her mother's praise. However, AIDA's eagerness for praise didn't mean that her mother's pressure was never met with resistance. Ada's rebellions could often prove

to be volatile. Once, when Aida couldn't stop fidgeting, a housemaid was ordered to confine her fingers with black cotton bags. The housemaid's attempt was met with a bite from the then five year old young lady of the house. Ada was sent to the corner to think about what she did, and she spent that time angrily biting down on the

molding on the walls. At tea time, Ada was allowed to return, and Annabella comforted her daughter by reading to her, rather ironically, based on what we know some soothing poetry. Ada was becoming prone to violent bouts like that, and Annabella forebodingly sought as a sign of her separated husband's cursed temperament coming through, Ada was becoming more like her father in other ways. When she was eight, she invented the word gobble book to describe her newly developed appetite

for reading. Around this time, her resistance to her schooling lessened. She became a passionate student across her subjects, from arithmetic to French to violin, the latter of which she often played while circling the billiard's table as her daily exercise. Her book about Aida and Annabella, the historian Miranda Seymour recounts that Ada thought outside the box when it came

to her mother's rigid lessons. Aida quote built cities of colored bricks and turned geography lessons into flights of fancy. Could the waves in Norway really surge higher than her own tall house? End quote. AIDA's relationship with her mother continued to be a complicated one. Many historians view Annabella as both overbearing and neglectful, while a smaller portion of historians find her behavior unremarkable compared to other upperclass mothers

of the era. Ada was certainly isolated and undersocialized as a child. Her mother was both obsessive about her daughter's education and anxious about any potential exposure to illness. Ada was also notably celebrity in her own right in England, thanks to her father's fame and notoriety and his very public separation from AIDA's mother, which only furthered the apparent

need for Aida to stay out of public view. AIDA's dearest and arguably only friend was her beloved cat Puff, though she also held a deep affection for her young cousin George and promised him Puff's kittens. The accusations of Annabella's neglectfulness come from the fact that as Aida got older, Annabella began to spend more and more time away from her daughter, visiting friends or taking rest cures for various health complications. During these periods, Ada was left in the

care of her governess's tutors. And of course Puff, I would be remiss if I didn't read you one of the letters twelve year old Ada wrote about the varied adventures of miss Puff. This one is to her mother while her mother was away. Quote, your granddaughter Puff has taken up all her kittens into a very nasty, dirty hole in the roof of the house where nobody can get at them. She stays with them all day long

and only comes down for her meals. I suppose their bed is made of cobwebs, and I think that Puff cannot have very refined taste. Around this time, something interesting begins to appear in Ada's letters. Beyond Puff's living habits.

We first see it show up in a diary entry from February eighteen, twenty eight quote, I am going to begin my paper wings tomorrow, and the more I think about it, the more I feel almost convinced that with a year or so's experience in practice, I shall be able to bring the art of flying to very great perfection. I think of writing a book on flyology, illustrated with plates. After giving her mother updates on Puff, AIDA's letters would provide updates on her attempts to build wings and fly.

As you might imagine, progress was slow. Ada began to sign her letters your affectionate young turkey or your carrier pigeon. And it's not a stretch to wonder how much of her desire to fly was spurred on by intellectual curiosity and how much of it was connected to being isolated and alone far from her mother. In a letter from March that same year, Ada wrote, quote, since last night, I've been thinking more about the flying, and I can find no difficulty in the motion or distension of the wings.

I've already thought of a way of fixing them to the shoulder, and I think that they might perhaps be made of oil silk. And if that does not answer, I must try to do what I can with feathers. I know you will laugh at what I'm going to say, but I'm going to take the exact patterns of a bird's wing in proportion to the size of its body, and then I am immediately going to set about making a pair of paperwings of exactly the same size as

a bird's in proportion to my size. Aida goes on to admit that she lacks information regarding bird anatomy, but she has no interest in dissecting a bird to learn more, and so she prevails upon her mother to send a book on the subject. AIDA's dreams of flying were put on pause not by her mother's disapproval, but by a serious illness she came down with in eighteen twenty nine, Ultimately,

Ada was bedridden until mid eighteen thirty two. Save for the occasional brief expedition in a wheelchair or on crutches, that was AIDA's life from ages fourteen to seventeen, an exceptionally key period in any adolescence development. During this period, Annabella and Ada relocated to a home just outside of London to be closer to the best doctors and eventually closer to society. Aida seems to have often been in great pain, even finding sitting up to be difficult at times.

Her letters became less frequent during that period, and the ones that were written are difficult to read because of shaky penmanship. Quote this has been a sad irregular week, reads one note to her tutor Monday. I missed nothing, but was so desponding and despairing that I could have cried with very great pleasure. It was during this time

that Annabella first introduced Ada to Lord Byron's poetry. Annabella's choice for her daughter was a poem called fare the Well, a poem in which Byron was directly addressing Annabella after their separation. The poem includes the line when our child's first accents flow, wilt thou teach her to say father. Annabella also gave Aida selections from Byron's epic The Jiaur, hopefully excluding the darker bits about being drowned in the

sea for infidelity. Ada's reaction was apparently lukewarm. On a larger scale, the bedridden teen was given much more leeway than she had ever been in regards to her reading, and her imagination continued to grow. But shortly after Ada was back in good health, her mother hired a new tutor to refocus the now nearly adult AIDA's education on

arithmetic and religion. I should also note that this decision was influenced by a brief stint in eighteen thirty three in which Aida unsuccessfully attempted to elope with a young man historians believe was her shorthand tutor due to a record of his swift termination, although there is no definitive proof about who the young man's identity actually was. The

young couple did not get very far. When Aida showed up at her lover's family home, his parents swiftly returned her to her mother, fearing the wrath of the famous Annabella. Hence the addition of a heavy emphasis on religion in the new curriculum. Ada was a dutiful student, but tried to explain to her tutor that she was not interested in arithmetic for its own sake, but rather for its

broader applications in capacities like physics. For those sorts of questions, she found a supportive mentor in her mother's friend, Mary Somerville, who just so happened to be one of nineteenth century England's most brilliant scientific minds. It was Mary who that same year would bring Ada to a party hosted by one of her closest friends, Charles Babbage. Mary Somerville and another Mary, Mary Mountgomery would prove to be great influences

on AIDA's intellectual growth. Two of her mother's closest friends had taken the eighteen year old Ada under their wings

and encouraged her love of science. Mary Montgomery brought Aida to lectures at intellectual hotspots like the Royal Institution, where Ada learned of the latest development in geology, chemistry, and natural philosophy, and the friendship of the Marys also allowed Ada to attend one of the famous Saturday soires hosted by Charles Babbage, for which in order to get an invitation you needed to possess quote beauty, rank, or intellect, at least as described by the wife of one science.

Ada had met the mathematician before through Mary Somerville, but it was at one of his soires that the two would form the beginnings of their ultimately history making working relationship. Despite Babbage being a year older than AIDA's mother, the two had a number of things in common. They had both dealt with periods of intense illness in their youth, and where Aida had attempted to craft wings to fly, Charles had attempted to craft shoes to walk on water.

Both of those are very Leonardo da Vinci in the movie Ever After, if you've seen it. When Aida and Babbage met, he attempted to delight his young guest with his Silver Lady automaton, but to his surprise, Aida was instead interested in another invention. On display a small portion of the steam powered computing machine Babbage had been ambitiously

trying to build four years. Another guest remarked how miss Byron young as she was, understood its working and saw the great beauty of the invention, Ada was consumed by the idea of it. Quote, I'm afraid that when a machine or a lecture, or anything of the kind comes my way. I have no regard for time, space or any other ordinary obstacle, Ada wrote to Somerville. Some months later. Annabella saw some value in the machine, but she was

weary of her daughter's intense passion for it. Around this time, Annabella had a friend provide her with a one hundred percent scientifically sound nothing to question here phrenology reading of AIDA's skull. As noted by Seymour, the reading quote confirmed Lady Byron's fears. Her daughter's intelligence was considerable, but it was of an impetuous and willful kind. Don't you hate

when the bumps on your skull reveal that? While Aida continued to be under the tutelage of her mother's tutor, Somerville and Babbage took on Aida as an unofficial pupil as well. It was during this time that Babbage began to conceptualize the machine that would ultimately come to be known as Babbage's Analytical Engine. However, it was also during this time that Aida began to show signs of extreme fatigue, and she ultimately listened to Somerville's advice to take a

step back from her studies. What was a woman to do with newfound free time, Why, of course, get married. The match was set up by Somerville. Lord William King, was a friend of her son from Trinity College, Cambridge, ironically Byron's alma mater, and Lord William King fancied himself something of a byronic figure. When he and Ada were introduced at a ball, he found himself not just infatuated with the legend of AIDA's late father, but with Ada herself.

They danced all night, and a few months later they were engaged. The couple married in eighteen thirty five, and while I don't want to dive too deeply into their married life for the sake of time, I would once again be remiss if I didn't share a portion of AIDA's writing with you. Early in their relationship, the couple apparently referred to each other with Avian nicknames, which I find very sweet given AIDA's history with wings. William was the crow, Ada was the bird, and they often called

AIDA's mother Annabella the hen. When a newly pregnant Aida spent some time visiting her mother away from her husband, she wrote to him with a new ornithological nickname, her dear cock, I want my cock at night to keep me warm. Absolutely no notes, Ada beautiful work. Your father wishes he could have written something so beautiful and so poetic. The kings were apparently a very good looking couple, and very much not afraid to show how much they thought

that of each other. When Aida and William gave the hen the honor of choosing the name of their newborn son, it may surprise you to hear what Annabella answered Byron. Grace had come with the passage of time. Annabella held more affection for her late husband as she aged, and with Ada grown and married, it seems she feared less

and less the risk of Byron's madness ruining her. A few years into the marriage, namely, when Princess Victoria became Queen Victoria in eighteen thirty seven, William and Ada became the Earl and Countess of Lovelace, reviving a title from Iron's side of the family that had become extinct a

century prior. Ada was not particularly interested in being a countess, however, and by eighteen forty she sought to resume her intellectual pursuits, something she found her husband didn't quite share her passion for. Quote I hope you are bearing me in mind, she wrote in a letter to Charles Babbage that year, I mean my mathematical interests. You know this is the greatest favor anyone can do me. Perhaps none of us can estimate how great. Who can calculate to what it might lead?

Am I too imaginative for you? I think not. AIDA's dear mentor Mary Somerville, had recently relocated to Italy with her family as her health declined, and Ada was seeking a new tutor to guide her curiosity. Babbage connected her with Augustus de Morgan, the English mathematician now remembered for his formulation known as de Morgan's Laws. It was de Morgan who refined the now twenty four year old AIDA's

mathematical potential. As an older student a married mother, Ada was learning how to dedicate herself to her improvement in practical ways, grasping, in her own words, quote the importance of not being in a hurry. Despite AIDA's newfound groundedness, she still couldn't shake her fascination with the analytical engine

Babbage had been working on. In January of eighteen forty one, she wrote to Babbage, quote, you have always been a kind and real and most invaluable friend to me, and I would that I could in any way repay it, though I scarcely dare to exalt myself as to hope, however humbly, that I can ever be intellectually worthy of attempting to serve you. It was around this time that AIDA's mood began to show again, back within the realms

of the mad and the poetical. She told de Morgan that the mathematical forms they were studying reminded her of the fairies she had read about in fiction. She wrote a letter to her mother that sounded not unlike those about flying as a youth, Only this time the letter was detailing her belief that she had intuited that in the future she would be able to build an apparatus that would allow her to see quote anything that a

being not actually dead can see and know. It's possible that this bout of slightly delusional thinking was brought on by learning that her cousin Medora Lee was in fact her half sister, likely the product of Lord Byron and his half sister Augusta, and their incestuous relationship. Quote. I am not in the least astonished, wrote to her mother after the revelation quote 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. Despite that cool reaction, in other writings, we can see that for Ada, learning that she was not in fact the Great Lord Byron's only heir, spurred in her a great need to prove herself, perhaps to surpass her father's achievements. She even considered turning to poetry quote it will be poetry of a unique kind, far more philosophical and higher in its nature than aught the world has perhaps yet seen.

End quote In regards to the incest of it all, Ada blamed Augusta more than her own father, imagining that she had been the instigator. Ada did find a way to publish poetry of a unique kind. In eighteen forty two, Luigi Frederico Menebrea, a professor of mechanics who ultimately became the seventh Prime Minister of Italy, published a paper on

Babbage's analytical engine in French. The editor of a London based journal approached one of Babbage's friends regarding his want for a translation, and Aida was immediately referred to for the job. Despite being in bad health at the time. As she increasingly was in adulthood, Ada eagerly accepted, finally getting her chance to be involved in any capacity with the project. In addition to writing an excellent translation, Babbage himself apparently proposed that Aida had her own thoughts on

the project in the paper's notes. In his conclusion, Minnebrea asked, quote, who can foresee the consequences of such an invention? Well? Aida had an answer one you heard at the top of this episode the quote vast new powerful language. Menabrea's paper was only originally around eight thousand words. AIDA's clocked

in at twenty thousand. The writer James Esinger in his book AIDA's Algorithm comments on the significance of her notes quote, Aida is seeking to do nothing less than invent the science of computing and separate it from the science of mathematics. What she calls the science of operations is indeed in effect computing. Unlike Babbage, Aida saw the practical uses of the analytical engine and foresaw the digitization of music as CDs or synthesizers and their ability to generate music. End quote.

That last bit of the passage about music refers to a part of AIDA's notes I consider worth reading aloud while you, the listener, recall that she was writing this in a eighteen forty two The computer, Aida argues, quote might act upon other things besides number, where objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of

the abstract science of operations. Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent. End quote. Ada's understanding of computing is bettered by her understanding of and passion for music that began as a child. In the

same vein. Her understanding of computing was equally bettered by

her understanding of language itself. She wrote, quote, this science constitutes the language through which a line we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world and those unceasing changes of mutual relationship which visibly or invisibly, consciously or unconsciously to our immediate physical perceptions are interminably going on in the agencies of the creation we live amidst It's downright philosophical, and in a more personal sense, regarding

AIDA's own experience, it contradicts the idea that one must be imaginative or logical to understand the natural world is to understand humanity, and vice versa. What ultimately led to Ada's recognition today as the first computer programmer was not her philosophical perspective on the potential of a computing device, but an algorithm called note G. I'll let essenger explain its significance far more intelligently than I would be able

to quote. Note G is highly complex, juggling mathematics and technology. Most important of all, it is in effect a program containing instructions for a computer. While note G isn't a program you can execute today, it is instead an instruction for how the analytical engine would theoretically execute it. Those in the programming community thus debate whether or not it can actually be considered the first computer program, but there is no doubt it was a pioneering line of thinking.

Aida initially didn't consider putting her name on her work at all, but later settled on signing as Aal at the suggestion of her husband. Notably, this pen name was genderless, which was AIDA's intention. Aal proudly presented her mother with her notes, which she called her first born. Quote. He will make an excellent head of I hope a large

family of brothers and sisters, she said. Annabella was extremely proud of her daughter, boasting herself as quote mother of Aida, which she said might be quote as good a passport to posterity if I am to have one as the wife of Byron. Though Ada published the notes simply under her initials, it quickly became known among London society that Lord Byron's brilliant daughter was the author, and she soon

was a well regarded name in the scientific community. Tragically, Ada's health only began to decline further, and her Notes would end up being her only published work. She would live for less than a decade after her note's publication, during which the state of her health ebbed and flowed. This is not to say that Aida didn't still live

a life during those years. There was ga gambling, there was infidelity, and there was ultimately an unknown deathbed confession so juicy that her husband left in her final hours, But unfortunately we just have to speculate on what exactly that confession was. Aida died of uterine cancer on November twenty seventh, eighteen fifty two, when she was thirty six

years old. Many have tried over the years to discredit AIDA's work and stick around for the epilogue to hear more about that, but today her impact as a visionary far ahead of her time is undeniable. In Miranda Seymour's book In Byron's Wake, she astutely compares AIDA's work to that of her father's friend Mary Shelley, writing quote, neither woman changed the world in which they lived uniquely. Both Lovelace and Shelley foresaw the role that technology might have

to play in transforming a world they never new. Perhaps it wasn't quite delusion when Ada told her mother that one day she could be able to see quote anything that a being not actually dead can see and know. That's the story of Ada Lovelace's technological achievements. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear a little

bit more about her legacy. It is no exaggeration, wrote the Babbage historian Bruce Collier to say that she was a manic, depressive with the most amazing delusions about her own talents and a rather shallow understanding of Charles Babbage

and the analytical engine. There is a history of valid debate within the scientific community as to whether or not AIDA's algorithm them constitutes a computer program, or whether or not she was the first computer programmer, but comments like the one made above have also not been uncommon throughout history,

comments that pretty much boil down to misogyny. Quote. As people realized how important computer programming was, there was a greater backlash and an attempt to reclaim it as a male activity, says Valerie Aurora, the executive director of the Ada Initiative, a nonprofit organization that arranges conferences and training programs to elevate women working in math and science in order to keep that wealth, she told The New Yorker and power in a man's hand, there's backlash to try

to redefine it as something a woman didn't do, and shouldn't do and couldn't do. Since two thousand and nine, Ada Lovelace Day has been celebrated on the second Tuesday of October, with the goal to quote raise the profile of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Let's be English

here for Ada maths. In twenty thirteen, when the New Yorker piece quoted above was written, a quote Ada Lovelace edit Athon was being hosted at my alma mater, Brown University, where volunteers were invited to improve Wikipedia entries for female scientists.

Universities continue to host various Ada Lovelace Day conferences and events each year, and last year the Official Ada Lovelace Day organizers hosted their annual Science Cabaret at the Royal Institution, where Mary Montgomery used to bring a teenage Ada Lovelace to broaden her mind. Noble Blood is a production of

iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwortz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams

and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.