Re: Happy Birthda Ada Lovelace

[Gene <gene.ressler@gmail.com>]

On Dec 10, 11:20 am, John McCormick <mccorm...@cs.uni.edu> wrote:
> On December 10, 1815, Anna Isabella (Annabella) Byron, whose husband
> was Lord Byron, gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada.  Ada's father
> was a romantic poet whose fame derived not only from his works but
> also from his wild and scandalous behavior.  His marriage to Annabella
> was strained from the beginning, and Annabella left Byron just a
> little more than a month after Ada was born.  By April of that year,
> Annabella and Byron signed separation papers, and Byron left England,
> never to return.
>
> Byron's writings show that he greatly regretted that he was unable to
> see his daughter. In one poem, for example, he wrote of Ada,
>
>         I see thee not.  I hear thee not.
>         But none can be so rapt in thee.
>
> Byron died in Greece at the age of 36, and one of the last things he
> said was,
>
>         Oh my poor dear child! My dear Ada! My God, could I but have
> seen her!
>
> Meanwhile, Annabella, who was eventually to become a baroness in her
> own right, and who was herself educated as both a mathematician and a
> poet, carried on with Ada's upbringing and education.  Annabella gave
> Ada her first instruction in mathematics, but it soon became clear
> that Ada's gift for the subject was such that it required more
> extensive tutoring.  Ada received further training in mathematics from
> Augustus DeMorgan, who is today famous for one of the basic theorems
> of Boolean algebra, which forms the basis for modern computers.  By
> the age of eight, Ada also had demonstrated an interest in mechanical
> devices and was building detailed model boats.
>
> When she was 18, Ada visited the Mechanics Institute to hear Dr.
> Dionysius Lardner's lectures on the "difference engine," a mechanical
> calculating machine being built by Charles Babbage.  She became so
> interested in the device that she arranged to be introduced to
> Babbage.  It was said that, upon seeing Babbage's machine, Ada was the
> only person in the room to understand immediately how it worked and to
> appreciate its significance.
>
> Ada and Babbage became good friends and she worked with him for the
> rest of her life, helping to document his designs, translating
> writings about his work, and developing programs to be used on his
> machines.  Unfortunately, Babbage never completed construction of any
> of his designs.  Even so, today Ada is recognized as being the first
> computer programmer in history. That title, however, does not do full
> justice to her genius.
>
> Around the time that Babbage met Ada, he began the design for an even
> more ambitious machine called the "analytical engine," which we now
> recognize was the first programmable computer.  Ada instantly grasped
> the implications of the device and foresaw its application in ways
> that even Babbage did not imagine.  Ada believed that mathematics
> eventually would develop into a system of symbols that could be used
> to represent anything in the universe.  From her notes, it is clear
> that Ada saw that the analytical engine could go beyond arithmetic
> computations and become a general manipulator of symbols, and thus it
> would be capable of almost anything.  She even suggested that such a
> device could eventually be programmed with rules of harmony and
> composition so that it could produce "scientific" music.  In effect,
> Ada foresaw the field of artificial intelligence over 150 years ago.
>
> In 1842, Babbage went to Turin, Italy, and gave a series of lectures
> on his analytical engine.  One of the attendees was Luigi Menabrea,
> who was so impressed that he wrote an account of Babbage's lectures.
> At age 27, Ada decided to translate the account into English, with the
> intent to add a few of her own notes about the machine.  In the end,
> her notes were twice as long as the original material, and the
> document, "The Sketch of the Analytical Engine," became the definitive
> work on the subject.
>
> It is obvious from Ada's letters that her "notes" were entirely her
> own and that Babbage was acting as a sometimes unappreciated editor.
> At one point, Ada wrote to him,
>
> "I am much annoyed at your having altered my Note.  You know I am
> always willing to make any required alterations myself, but that I
> cannot endure another person to meddle with my sentences."
>
> Ada gained the title Countess of Lovelace when she married Lord
> William Lovelace.  The couple had three children, but Ada was so
> consumed by her love of mathematics that she left their upbringing to
> her mother.  For a woman of that day, such behavior was considered
> almost as scandalous as some of her father's exploits, but her husband
> was actually quite supportive of her work.
>
> In 1852, Ada died from cancer.  Sadly, if she had lived just one year
> longer, she would have witnessed the unveiling of a working difference
> engine built from one of Babbage's designs by George and Edward
> Scheutz in Sweden.  Like her father, Ada lived only until she was 36,
> and, even though they led much different lives, she undoubtedly
> admired Byron and took inspiration from his unconventional and
> rebellious nature.  At the end, Ada asked to be buried beside him at
> the family's estate.
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Ada Lovelace biography material excerpted from "Programming and
> Problem Solving with Ada" by Dale, Weems, and McCormick, published by
> Jones and Bartlett, 2000
>
> The film "To Dream Tomorrow" from Flare Productions,www.flarefilms.org,
> tells the story of Ada Lovelace and her contributions to computing.
> It is a great film for Ada enthusiasts.  See if you can find the error
> in the inscription on her tomb.

John,

Thanks for this!  I am about mid-way through Toole's "Ada -
Enchantress of Numbers"

http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Enchantress-Numbers-Selection-Description/dp/0912647094

It's fascinating.

More to the point, we're acquiring through commission a lifesize bust
of Ada by Tracy H. Sugg.  See http://tracyhsugg.com/gallery.php for
some of her work.  I'm curious if the readers here know what interest
there might be in editions of the piece if they were available in the
$3500 range (white clay, not bronze as the pictures; bronze jumps the
price to the $8k range).  E.g for university computer science and
upscale industrial spaces.  As best I can tell there exists no similar
item available for sale.

Thanks.