Was Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer?

this podcast. Sure dead, Yeah, let's talk about her. This is comes courtesy of a little listener mail. And uh, this listener mail is actually a two fur We got two requests in the space of a week, which is not a big surprise considering the subject of this um this podcast. It's a listener mail rock blaw. Yeah. So this comes from Bridget and Adam. So uh, 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 Ada Lovelace,

otherwise known as the Mother of Coding. I've done a little research 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 Jonathan, we can't do this podcast. What do you mean we can't do this podcast. It's already been done. I mean stuff he 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 wrote a programmers 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. 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 tenth, 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 we're separated by January six, eighteen sixteen, 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 there. 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 uh, 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 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.

It's the subject 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. Uh. 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 express 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? Yeah? 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, as it turns out, there was a William King, not the one she married, as her tutor, who was apparently uh 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 bear in King and U was an earl made an earl in nineteen thirty eight, so that's when she became eight eighteen thirty eight, dude. So yes, he was made an earl in eighteen thirty eight, and that's when she became the Countess of Lovelace. Yes, so

we 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 passed away from after contracting cancer. Um. I think she was thirty seven. It was eighteen fifty two, and she died November eighteen, eighteen

fifty two. Right. Uh so, But during that her her life, she ended up encountering lots of remarkable people as 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 right around when that happened. Um. And she she rubbed elbows with other people who were interested in math and science, like Mary Somerville. Um. And that's uh, I don't know. Should we get into the the time when she was talking at a party with Babbage about this new machine four 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, Abbage 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, 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 put it all together, and uh, he kind of ran out of money before he ran out machine. The 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 yes 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. The analytical engine was more like a very primitive computer. Yeah, and as a matter of fact that at that time, that whole time thing, the fact that 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 giving you no more money. Yeah.

And then the other part of they probably did. They probably said with an English accent, So that's probably until you go and fish daddy, we ain't given you no more money. Uh. They're apparently all glad, apparently apparently all played by Dick van Dyke. So um anyway, at any rate, so the sammage 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 over here 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 s. Babbage 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, 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 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 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 geaking out for a second. Okay, I'm sorry, I will. I will give you a quote from her. As a matter of fact, she uh, she compared 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 UM basically made a lot of people unhappy because it used punch cards to automate parts of the weaving process. You could put in a pattern, a card for a pattern in 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 in 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, U 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 two different kinds of punch cards. One would be a set of instructions and the other would be would represent the constants or 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 results. Exactly 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 waver 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 a mention of as I was looking specifically for information about it to lovel 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, and that

puts it 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. The each punch card had um had several columns of holes or or columns where you could punch a hole uh 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 punched 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. But again, Babbage was just thinking in terms of numbers. Lovelace was the one who was thinking in terms of graphics, music, that kind of thing. And then Lovelace comes up with a kind of a test. She she writes out a 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 seriously, I looked at Bernoulli numbers. I looked up five or six different explanations, and really it's just a it's 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, 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, was published in seventeen um and based on the and that was in the art I hope I probably am not pronouncing

this right ours conject CONDI or yeah. Anyway, anyway, it was published by Mr Bernouilli, who was one of several in his family to work with math um. But the Bernouilli numbers are very very important because they can be used in a lot of different ways related to number theory and trigger a metric 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 yea. 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 of 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 side of time. I was sorry, that would have peditively redundant. Well, it's hard to say he was first, but they were around the same time, 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. 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 on 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 in 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 love Lace 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 guy's 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 the the analytical engine to to defeat crime

and solve mysteries. And what does sort of sound like the like it should be a Hanna Barbera show or something kind of, but the arts better. So yeah, no, it's really great stuff. I definitely recommend it. And you know, you know why we got these these emails so close together, right, why is that? It's because of Ada 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 um, 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, you I ignore that

because this woman was just phenomenal, period, absolutely brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, And uh, I should point out too 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, lating 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 Maybe 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 to aid a Lovelace again, And if you want to know more about her as a person, definitely check

out the stuffy Missing 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 combat of but it's a it's an interesting story, kind of tragic ultimately, but definitely helps shape the way

the history of computers. And since that wraps up that discussion, I thought we'd go on too a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from Johnny, and Johnny says, Hey, guys, I heard that Stuff you Should Know is making T shirts. How about we have a T shirt contest? Also, you said in your Microchip podcast that you guys were related to the Science Channel. What's going on here? Is there any other things that how Stuff works is related to? Thanks well, Johnny. UM. As for the T shirt thing,

I wouldn't hold my breath right now. Stuff you Should Know is by far our most popular podcast, and of course has the the biggest audience, which is fantastic, great show. UM, And so we've kind of we're kind of trying to see how that goes before we do any other kind of T shirt stuff. We'll definitely keep it in mind, but I'm I'm not gonna I don't I don't see it happening in the near future. However, you did ask

what our relationship was to the Science Channel. You want to take that one, Chris well, of course we are a part of Discovery Communication, right. Uh, and there are lots and lots of really awesome TV channels and websites related to that, like the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, TLC, Planet Green and well Planet Right and all those guys. Yeah, so sites like tree hugger dot com. Right awesome. Yeah,

so we're part of a really big family. And that's what Pilette meant when he said that, Uh, the Science Channel was kind of related to us. We're all kind of under the umbrella Discovery Communications. So um, hopefully that answers your question. If any of you have any other questions, send them into us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will taught to you again really soon for more on

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