TechStuff Classic: Was Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer?

thousand ten, and I wanted to publish it today. On March eight two is when the republication date is because it's International Women's Day, and I thought what more appropriate way to celebrate International Women's Day than by celebrating one of the most remarkable women in tech history, Ada Lovelace. So this episode has the title was Ada Lovelace the first computer Programmer, which is particular regularly fascinating because she

lived at a time before computers. Chris Pallette and I talk about Ada and you can hear how much we fell in love with her as we did our research. I hope you enjoy this classic episode. We got two requests in the space of a week, which is not a big surprise considering the the subject of this um this podcast, it's a listener mail rock blow Yes. So

this comes from Bridget and Adam. So I'll read bridgets first, Bridget is from Australia, but I'm not going to try and do an Australian accent because whenever I do, I sound like a New Zealander who suffered massive head trauma. So here is bridgets email. Good day, Chris and Jonathan. I've been spending some time lately looking to inspirational people in hope of finding a suitable name for my soon to be born child. Such searching brought me to Aida Lovelace,

otherwise known as the Mother of Coding. I've done a little search into Ada and found that there's some discussion as to whether she deserves this moniker. Was Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer and therefore a worthy namesake for my future daughter? Let me know what you think. Cheers, Bridget and Adams. Was I recently learned a little about Ada Lovelace, the first woman to write an algorithm that would be read by a computer, and thought it would

make a great podcast. I love the show. Keep up the amazing work. Can you also do a show on the LHC. Please cheers? Insert beer clink sound here. Alright, Bridget and Adam, this is our podcast about Ada, not about the lhc um jan, we can't do this podcast. What do you mean we can't do this podcast? It's already been done. I mean Stuff you Missed in History Class, it's already done a whole podcast. There's a podcast called stuff you Missed in History Class? There is It's wonderful,

is that the one with Katy and Sarah? It is indeed, and they talked about Ada Lovelace already they did, and they did really Well, you know what we should do, what's that? We should just have their podcast play and we'll sign off. All right, we'll just insert their podcast here and then no, we can't. We can't do that. We can't do that. Besides, they specifically mentioned us in

that podcast. Well, maybe what we should do then is talk specifically about her computer programming expertise and how she managed to do that considering she lived in the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, you would think she lived before computers. How could she have written a computer programmer? Program? Rather not she wrote a programmer. That's been a long week. Well, we're gonna do this on Friday. Actual clearly not, but we're going

to tell you how she wrote a computer program. First of all, Bridget I'm going to get this all the way. First of all, congratulations on your child, Um, and also Aida is more than worthy, I would say. In fact, I kind of fell in love with this lady the more I read about her. Actually her first name was an Aida. No, it was Augusta Augusta Ada Byron. Yeah, Augusta Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron the poet. Yes. She was born December eighteen fifteen, the daughter of Lord

George Gordon Byron and Annabella Millbank Byron. Um. Actually, your parents married on the second of January and eighteen fifteen, but were separated by January six, eighteen sixteen. YEA, so the marriage lasted a full year and a week and a half, just long enough to uh to have the first computer programmer born to them, right, Um, so yes, they're they're marriage was not a happy one. Her parents and uh. In fact, um young Ada was never to meet.

Her father was separated. Um, she lived with her mom, and her mom had decided that Aida did not really need to have the distractions of poetry. She thought that Byron's rather unpredictable personality let's call it that showy um was due to his romanticism and his obsession with poetry. Yeah, let's just and and Annabella. The mother felt that the

that such qualities were not really admirable. She didn't want her daughter to have the same sort of personality and uh and and wanting lifestyle as the father did had so um, so she thought, well, what's the least poetic thing I can push my daughter into. I happen to be an amateur mathematician. Let's push her into mathematics. Yeah. Actually, uh. As a matter of fact, I found out that Lord Byron had referred to his very brief married married wife. Um,

he called Annabella the Princess of parallelograms. Yes, that was a lot poetic. It was not meant to be a compliment, nonetheless, but it does illustrate that she had a mathematical bent herself. And what I find interesting is that not only were Lord Byron's poetical genes evident later in Ada's life, but it's actually she ended up being sort of a blend

of both of her parents, as is appropriate for this case. Yeah. Yeah, and Ada herself received a wonderful, wonderful title given to her by by Charles Babbage, who will will discuss at length in a little bit. Uh. The enchantress of numbers, which I think is an amazing, amazing phrase and very fitting as well. So Aida grows up UM with some

of the best tutors in that you can imagine. During this time she studies mathematics and has absolutely fascinated with them, the subject of mathematics, and is incredibly adept, an amazing student. In fact, the more we research data, the more I realized anyway, that she was phenomenally more intelligent than I am. I mean, I can't even really compare UM. She was able to to understand algorithms that that completely baffle me, and I was able to to really study them in

a way that she found fascinating. I find them perplexing and maddening. She found it as having its own kind of poetry. UM. And in a way you think about it, well, this kind of makes sense, you know, we we when you really look at algorithms, we're talking about things like number theory and how the universe sort of works, like how things kind of fit together. And we expressed this more often than not through mathematic equations and algorithms and things of that nature. And she was able to see

that kind of stuff. I'm under I can understand the underlying concept, but when you get beyond that, it just I feel like I'm a fish out of water. Yeah, I understand. Well, let's see, Um, somebody who else who was fascinated with her would be William King. Yes, he was so fascinated. Whether he married her? Well, the first William King who was who was her tutor? I found that I found this interesting. I mean the two different William Kings. Well, no, actually I did mean I did

mean her future husband. But it was really funny because it confused me for a second when I was doing the research. I said, William King was her tutor, and then it turns out there was a William King, not the one she married, as her tutor, who was apparently immediately feeling out of his depth as he talked to her. He realized that she had a much more innate grasp of mathematics than he did, so he he actually bowed

out very quickly. He was one of the many many But yeah, less than a year later, apparently he uh ad married the other William King, who um was the eighth Baron King and was an earl, made an earl in ninety eight, so that's when she became eighteen thirty eight, dude, Sorry, So, yes, he was made an earl in eighteen thirty eight, and that's when she became the Countess of Lovelace. Yes, so he usually just referred to her as Ada Lovelace. Uh Now.

Aida continued her her almost obsession with mathematics throughout her life, which unfortunately was tragically short Ada us away from after contracting cancer. Um. I think she was thirty seven. It was eighteen fifty two, and she died November eighteen eighteen. Right. Uh so, but during that her life she ended up encountering lots of remarkable people, including you know, like the author of Charles Dickens, who became a close friend. One

of her other friends was Charles Babbage. Yeah, she met she met Babbage, who was the Leucassian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. She met him when she was just seventeen. Um, which is a pretty interesting eighteen thirty three was it went around when that happened. Chris and I have more to say about Ada Lovelace in just a moment, But first let's take a quick break. Should we get into the the time when she was talking at a party Babbage about this new machine Um, he had come up

with this thing, the analytical Engine. Yes, all right, well let's let's backtrack just a touch before we get into the analytical Engine. That was not the first machine that Babbage had proposed. No, no, not at all. As a matter of fact, we brought it up before from the past, right, that was a fun podcast, Um, But yes, this was a more recent one. And as we talked about on that podcast, Um, Babbage was having difficulty getting funding for

these amazing machines because people just didn't get it. Babbage was able to get subfunding for his first uh machine, which is called the Difference Engine. Yes, it was different from the other one, right, it was a little more simplistic than his idea for the analytical engine. Right now. The Difference Engine, he managed to get some money to fund it, but his the process of building it was

a very long, laborious process. They had to actually machine these parts by hand and and try and it all together. And uh, he kind of ran out of money before he ran out of machine. Machine was not done yet. And um it was in the process of this whole construction phase that he got the idea for the analytical machine,

which was even more ambitious than the difference engine. Right, So the analytical engine was going to be uh more complex and be able to do more than the difference engine, which you could kind of say was essentially a giant calculator, right. The analytical engine was more like a very primitive computer. And as a matter of fact that at that time, that whole time thing, the fact that it was taking a long time to build, did not help him when

he was seeking funding for the analytical engine. Right. There were two things that two things that budd that kind of plagued him when he was trying to get some money. One was that he had not finished the difference engine, and that was kind of what he was being paid for in the first place. So his funders were saying, until you build this other machine you promised us several

years ago, we ain't given you no more money. Yeah, And then the other part of they probably did say like that out They probably said with an English accents, that's probably till you go and fish daddy, we ain't given you no more money. They're apparently all glad, apparently apparently all played by Dick van Dyke. So anyway, at any rate, so Sabbage is in a tight spot. But he comes up with this idea of the analytical engine, and of course he's very passionate about it, so he's

blabbering on and on about it at parties. Yes, then you have young Ada Lovelace, who overhears such talk thinks this sounds absolutely fascinating. And not only does she think it's interesting, she immediately sees the potential to use such a device far beyond even Babbage is uh concepts. Sabbage is thinking, well, this would allow you to create an engine that would be able to generate the numbers that

you would find in a logarithmic table. Yes, because until that point you pretty much had to be able to come up with those figures by doing the calculations all yourself. And these calculations were pretty complex, and it was easy to make a mistake along the way, which would of

course affect all of your figures from that point on. Uh. And he he just he was sitting down one day and he was thinking, what if I could What if there are a machine, some steam powered machine that could generate these numbers so I wouldn't have to and then I could I could generate them as far out as I wanted to. Uh. And I wouldn't have to worry about error because the machine would just be following the same algorithm over and over and over again. Yes, well,

Ada thought of that, and she even went further. She said that you could potentially use mathematics to represent other things like text or images or even music. She would

had foreseen computers. This remarkable woman was able to look at this machine that really was meant to be able to run algorithms so that you could generate more mathematical figures mainly in the in the pursuit of mathematics itself and things like number theory, um, and she was able to see even grander uses, which to me is it's it's it's one of those discoveries that I just think before that time, no one had ever really even considered this, and then she just comes up with it just by

looking at this thing and seeing its potential. Yes, it's that's where I'm like, Okay, this woman was way above and beyond smarter than I am. All right, stop geeking out for a second. Okay, I'm sorry. I will I will give you a quote from her. As a matter of fact, she h she compared to to Jacquard's looms if you will remember we've mentioned that machine a couple

of times on the podcast. I believe, Um, this was a loom that was invented by uh Monsieur Jacquard and basically made a lot of unhappy because it used punch cards to automate parts of the weaving process. You could put in a pattern, a card for a pattern, and the loom would be able to weave that pattern into the fabric. While she said, um, we may say most aptly that the analytical engine weaves algebraical patterns just as

the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves. So see, there you go, there's that whole poetry thing she's you know, that's just in there. Yeah. Well, and and like I said, even if you even if you ignore the language, and Ada was very gifted with with words, just as she was with mathematics. Um, the fact that she could see the poetry in in math is again very phenomenal to me. Well, I meant that she was making connections between something that was completely, well not completely, but and wide in a

wide way. It was it was not very related directly to this analytical engine. Uh. Also you might notice, um, she sort of foresaw the use of punch cards, uh, to be used for programs. So she's already thinking in a programmatic sense. Yeah. Actually, Babbage himself talked a little bit about punch cards when he wrote about his analytical engine. Um. Yeah, and in his sense he was talking about the the use for punch cards for two purposes. And we've talked

about this. Babbage also we we shouldn't we shouldn't know. He's leave him out of this amazing innovation as well. Babbage was also amazing in his ability to foresee the future as far as computers are concerned. Now, granted, his devices were all mechanical as opposed to electrical, Yes, but they the principles of electronic computing are based very firmly on Babbage's discoveries. Um. Babbage foresaw the use of punch

cards using a few different kinds of punch cards. One would be a set of instructions, and the other would be would represent the constants variables of whatever formula you're plugging in. Right, So one is the program and the other is the information that you plug into the program to get a result. Exactly the same sort of thing that we see in microprocessors today. What Babbage was doing.

Was was the the precursor to the micro processor. It's just his was a macro processor because it was enormous and weighed tons and tons. If he had ever managed to actually build it at the size of that silicon wafer, yeah, he never. He never did build the analytical engine. He did he realized during his lifetime that it was not going to happen, and I'm sure it was a massive

disappointment to him. But they have been made since. Yes, there was one created almost like an art project in the early nineties, and um, fun I think it's in a museum now, right, Yeah, Actually, I think I think

there may be two. To be honest, I think it's one of the things that I ran across the mention of as I was looking specifically for information about it to love life, so I didn't follow it, but yeah, I think I think I saw that there were two in existence now that had been created just because you can and and Babbage actually wrote that the analytical engine would eventually contain an apparatus for printing on paper or if required, up to two copies printed out on paper

ahead of the iPad. I'm kidding their software for that. It would have a means for producing a stereotype mold of the tables or results it computes, and it would have a mechanism for punching on blank pasteboard cards or metal plates the numerical results of any of its computations. So, in other words, you would read it by looking at a punch card. You would find the results of whatever it was that you were trying to uh to calculate, and the his his method of designating a punch card

was actually pretty simple. But each punch card had um had several columns of holes or columns where you could punch a hole and ten rows. And if you punched the top hole, that would be a one. If you punched the top two that would be a two, If you punch the top three that would be a three. So this isn't binary, you see what I'm saying. Yes, So it was a very simple way. You would look at the punch card and you would say, all right, well the first number is a three because the first

three holes are punched. That kind of thing that made it pretty easy to read. Yes, But again Babbage was just thinking in terms of numbers. Love Lace was the one who was thinking in terms of graphics, music, that kind of thing. We have a bit more to say about the enchantress of numbers, but before we get into that, let's take another quick break. Lovelace comes up with a kind of a test. She she writes out of program

essentially based on Babbage's uh design for the analytical engine. Now, this engine again did not physically exist at this point, in fact, that it never existed during his life, and and and Lovelace predeceased Babbage. So Lovelace looks at this design and she says, you know what, let's just take one uh one mathematical algorithm, and I will design a program for this engine that would fulfill this algorithm. So she decides to create a program that would generate Bernoulli numbers.

I would like to explain to you what a Bernoulli number is, Honestly, I would like to, but I'm an English major, and no, seriously, I looked at Bernoulli numbers. I looked up five or six different explanations, and really it's just a it's a it's a level of mathematics with which I am not comfortable. So I cannot even

explain um. They're generated through the through a simple algorithm, relatively simple algorithm, and um, Lovelace was able to create a program that would have generated Bernoulli numbers through the analytic engine had it ever been built. So I would say that, yes, you can call her the first computer programmer definitely. So um, yeah, it's I admit it's been a long time since, uh, since I took calculus to

more than twenty years now. But yeah, the Bernoulli numbers were named for Jaco Bernoulli, who published actually the work was published after his death. It was published in seventeen thirteen, um and based on the and that was in the art I hope I probably am not pronouncing this right ours knjak Condi or yeah, anyway, anyway, it was published by Mr Bernoulli, who was one of several in his

family to work with math um. But the Bernoulli numbers are very very important because they can be used in a lot of different ways related to number theory and triggonometric functions as well. But yes, number theory, I mean we're talking about a lot of pure mathematics here. Yeah, it's it's basically has to deal with the consecutive integers and and the way the sums of powers are calculated. Yeah,

I read that, and um sure ye. Also I should also point out before anyone writes in uh, he was not the first, He was not the only person to discover this principle. Well, I mean this is a time of people who were discovering things at the same time, right at the same time. There was two different forms. I want to say it was a Japanese scholar who discovered it, and also his work was published after he passed away, and it was published in seventeen twelve, one

year before. But they probably discovered it around the same time. Yeah, because this was actually almost ten years I think after Bernoulli's death, so it would have been back concurrently, simultaneous, concurrently sign I was sorry that would have been rely redundant. Well, it's hard to say he was first, but they were around the same time. I'm just as you know, in the immediately preceding years we have the calculus being conceived of. It's fast. It must have been a really heavy time

for mathematicians. Oh sure, and uh so yeah, I mean the fact that that Lovelace was able to you know, she she knew of course about this um the algorithm to generate Bernoulli numbers and was able to program a You know this this is all more or less a thought experiment, because again, nothing existed with which upon which she could run this program. But she was able to create a program that would have generated Bernoulli numbers based upon the way that the analytical engine would have worked.

So the fact that one she understood this, which all by itself is pretty amazing to me, because I mean in the sense that I find it completely incomprehensible. Too. She was able to write a program for something that only existed in theory, I mean, and and she had a lot of influence with Babbage. The two of them together really kind of shaped the analytical engine, and they would find errors into each other's work. So it wasn't like like Babbage would make mistakes because he's human and

Lovelace would find them. And sometimes Lovelace would make mistakes and Babbage would find them. They had a very long history of correspondence um and also a web comic. Yes, yeah, we have to mention that the Lovelace and Babbage web comic. Oh this, guys, do a search on on the web for the Lovelace and Babbage web comic because it is phenomenal. I think it's a it's a very playful, tongue in cheek tribute to these two individuals. But I think it's also you can tell it's it's made out of love.

I mean that kind of effort to go into two and and it's great art. It's great writing. Um. It kind of picks up on the presumption of Lovelace and Babbage becoming kind of like a crime fighters using computational in the analytical engine to to deffe eat crime and solve mysteries and what those sort of sound like, the like it should be a Hanna Barberi show or something kind of, but the arts better. So yeah, no, it's

really great stuff. I definitely recommended. And you know, you know why we got these these emails so close together, right, why is that? It's because of it a Lovelace Day. Ah. Yeah. Now, the very first Aida Lovelace Day was held on the March two thousand nine, and they had another one this year again March. And you can find information about Ada Lovelace Day on Facebook, on on the web in general. There's a Twitter feed for called finding Ada and Ada

is a d A so it's all one word finding Ada. Um, and they try and get people to sign a pledge to blog about Ada Lovelace and kind of increased public awareness of who this woman was and what she accomplished and how really amazing you know, she was. And um there if you look at contemporary records of Lovelace, uh, it's it's a little for me, it's a little discomforting

because it's it's almost dismissive. It's like she's amazing despite the fact that she's a woman, I mean, which is of course indicative of the the general philosophy of the era, right, but I mean it's you know, I ignore that because this woman was just phenomenal period, absolutely brilliant. Yeah yeah, And I should point out to that that's not the only time she's been honored, um, you know, and recognized

for her work. Uh the As a matter of fact, oddly enough, the United States Department of Defense honored her with her own program own programming language in nine. So she's I think she's fascinating enough that she just sort of keeps popping up in history from time to time. People get fascinated and want to learn more about her and every reason she's absolutely brilliant. Lay anyone, anyone who has a computer science background has heard of her just

from their their studies. But yeah, I can't help but feel that had she not had cancer, had she been able to to live on and continue her work, um, that possibly the era of computers would have come a little faster. Now. It's the main thing that would have had to have happened was that the combination of Lovelace and Babbage's work would together would have to convince people

to invest in completing the analytical engine. Um because of course they didn't have the resources at their disposal to create an electrical computer that would still it would still have been a mechanical instrument, and who knows how sophisticated it ultimately would have been. It may be that her vision of of mathematics representing music and graphics and that sort of thing would take longer and possibly a totally different form factor than the analytical engine. But we might

compute completely differently than we do now. Yeah, who knows. It could have been a very steampunk kind of a kind of future. Right. Well, I hope we did justice to uh Ada Lovelace again, And if you want to know more about her as a person, definitely check out the stuff you missed in history class. Yes, they do,

they do. It's an excellent job. Yeah, we I listened to it before we did this podcast, and uh and and Katie and Sarah really do a great job at giving an idea of what her life was like, and especially her relationship with her mother, which was a very complex relationship. Um and sometimes combative, but it's a it's an interesting story, kind of tragic ultimately, but definitely helps shape the way the history of computers. And that wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you

enjoyed it. If you really like the story of Ada Lovelace, you gotta check out our store over at t public dot com slash tech stuff. We have the code like a Girl T shirt that has Ada Lovelace on The shirt has an illustration of Ada Lovelace. It's one of my favorite shirts. Um. I own a couple of them. In fact, I bought them. In fact, I loved it so much I would have purchased it. Didn't tell anyone, and then everyone said, hey, we could have sent you a version of that if you wanted, but no, I

I really felt like that was something important. And uh, I love that particular shirt. You should go check that out. Even if you don't buy one, go at least take a look at it, because I'm really proud of that particular product. If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, send me an email. The address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Don't forget to visit our website that's over at tech stuff

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