Reviews of Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers
Ada Lovelace: The World’s First Hacker . . .
Toole did research for more than eight years, burying herself in British archives and libraries to narrate and edit this extraordinary collection of letters written by Ada Lovelace. Not only do they outline Ada’s ingenuity for the sciences, but they also enlighten us on all aspects of Lady Lovelace’s multidimensional life: her passionate desire to flourish in a “man’s world,” her battle with drug addiction and chronic sickness, and her efforts as a mother and wife. Lovelace also had a reputation as a wild gambler and a lover. What can tell us more truthfully about Ms Lovelace’s life than letters from the Lady herself?
Carla Sinclair, Net Chick
Toole lets Ada speak for herself through letters to colleagues, family and friends which bring Ada to life with an intimacy a biography never could.
Alice Polesky, San Francisco Chronicle.
Betty Alexandra Toole’s revelatory book gives us the sad, evocative and all–too–human story of the woman behind the Ada myth.
Bruce Sterling co-author of the Difference Engine, and author of Hacker Crackdown
“Beyond stereotypes”
Wired
The story of Ada’s life and of her relationship with Babbage has been sadly distorted, and Dr Toole, who has in my view an unrivaled knowledge of Ada’s life, here gives us the opportunity to set the record straight. By this Dr Toole helps clarify not only Ada’s personal life, but also an important early stage of the computer revolution.
Dr Anthony Hyman, author of Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer (Oxford/Princeton)
“Excellent and thoughtful”
Annals of the History of Computing
Daughter of Lord Byron, companion and partner of Charles Babbage, Ada was one of the most picturesque characters in the history of technology. . . Ada’s letters are some of the classic founding documents of cybernetics and computer science, written nearly a century before ENIAC . . .
Howard Rheingold, author of Virtual Reality and Virtual Communities
Dr Toole has written a brilliant and insightful book that reveals the depth not only of Lovelace’s genius but also her personal passions. It is an essential and inspiring book, one that crosses the boundaries of time and gender.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, producer of the virtual reality movie “Conceiving Ada”
Dr. Betty Toole has dedicated almost a lifetime of effort to elucidating the character and personality of Ada Lovelace, and has brought forth the real evidence, in Ada’s own words, that tells us who Ada really was. Instead of an enigmatic caricature, we find a real person and a passionate thinker who was truly the visionary who foresaw what was to come, with ideas about future computers, even before the word was coined, that went far beyond the mere calculating machines of her day. Carlos McEvilly, developer of “Secret Ada.”
ADA
THE ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS
POETICAL SCIENCE
BY
BETTY ALEXANDRA TOOLE Ed.D.
E-book revised and abridged
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Poetical Science
Copyright©2010 Betty Alexandra Toole
ISBN 9780615397269
First published 1992
Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer
Copyright© 1992 Betty Alexandra Toole, Ed.D.
Copyright©1992 Lovelace-Byron Collection
Paperback edition, revised and abridged
Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer
Copyright©1998 Betty Alexandra Toole, Ed.D.
Copyright©1998 Lovelace-Byron Collection
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners. Quotations must cite this book, and if for purposes other than review or journal articles, permission must be received from the copyright owner in writing. Part of the proceeds of this book will go to the University of California at Berkeley and Expanding Your Horizons.
For information about foreign and other rights, contact publisher.
Published by Critical Connection
P.O. Box 452
Sausalito, CA 94966
http://www.well.com/user/adatoole
Cover designed by Jeffrey Burnham
Book designed by Jeffrey Burnham
Cover: Portrait of Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, by A. E. Chalôn, circa 1838, courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum, and image source from Matthias Kulka/Corbis Images.
To Jordan, Rachel, Alec and Jeni
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Reviews
Time Line
Family Tree
Cast of Characters
Scientific Trinity
1. Child of Love, Nurtured in Convulsion [1815-1816]
2. The Death of a Father, Cats and Flying Machines [1815-1816]
3. Conversational Litigation, I Am an Altered Person, Ada Meets Babbage, The Rainbow [1829-1834]
4. From Calculating Machines to the Difference Engine [1833]
5. Make It Part of Your Mind, Solving Unsolvable Equations, The Universal Machine [1834-1835]
6. The Royal Road to Love, Marriage, and Establishing Three Households, The Birth of Byron [1835-1836]
7. Two More Children, Ada Becomes a Countess, Gift of Tongues [1836-1839]
8. A Peculiar Way of Learning, Immeasurable Vista, Solitaire, The Great Unknown [1839-1841]
9. In Due Time I Shall Be a Poet, A Scientific Trinity, A Most Strange and Dreadful History [1841]
10. I Have a Duty to Perform, Avis-Phoenix, Will-o’-the-Wisps [1841]
11. Scorn and Fury, Poetical Genius, Not Dropping the Thread of Mathematics, A Nice Colony of Friends [1842]
12. Working Like the Devil, A Fairy in Your Service
13. What a General I Would Make, An Analyst and a Metaphysician [1843]
14. Multitudinous Charlatans and the Enchantress of Numbers [1843]
15. The Analyst and the Metaphysician, and the Analytical Engine: A Selection from Ada’s Notes [1843]
16. Fairy Guidance, My Metaphysical Child, Caged Bird [1843-1844]
17. Planetary Systems, Not a Snail-Shell But a Molecular Laboratory, A Newton for the Molecular Universe [1844]
18. A Calculus of the Nervous System, A Hospitable Chaos, The Traitor, Too Much Mathematics [1844]
19. Vestiges, Obedient with Safety, Poetical Science [1845-1846]
20. A Transition State [1846-1850]
21. Spasms of the Heart, A Few More Years [1849-1850]
22. Voltigeur, Everyone is Grossly Slandered, Cold Stone Behind [1850]
23. Descending into the Grave, Resurrection, Be a Gypsy, Doomsday [1850-1851]
24. The Great Exhibition, Not £5 in My Purse, Give the Despots a Shove [1851]
25. The Dragon and the Rainbow [1851-1852]
Appendix I: Footnotes, Bibliographies, Biographies, including Web addresses
Appendix II: Critical Questions along the Pathway to the 21st Century
Appendix III: Questions for the Reader
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
To Judy Rodich, my excellent editor, who once again provided superb support. Jeff Burnham deserves credit for the cover, book design, and patience. I am thankful to my two readers, Barbara Morris, a calculus teacher par excellence, and Diane Toole, who provided great suggestions. Of course
all mistakes are my responsibility.
Appendix I and the list of illustrations cite specific acknowledgments for the material in this book. The Earl of Lytton, Somerville College, the University of Oxford and the British Library deserve special appreciation for the use of the material. Colin Harris of the Bodleian Library, at the University of Oxford, has been a major support through all three editions of Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers.
I also thank my family, friends and neighbors who have put up with my detestably persevering passion for the story of Ada Lovelace. Computers and computer software change at such a rapid rate, but I hope her humanity will be the light that endures.
A SHORT CAST OF CHARACTERS AND PLACES
Ada’s Parents, Their Family and Friends
Her mother’s family, the Noels and the Milbankes. Her mother’s aunt, Lady Melbourne, and first-cousin, Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister. Her mother’s spinster friends, the “Three Furies,” Mary Montgomery, Selina Doyle, Francis Carr.
Her father’s family, his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and one of her seven children, Elizabeth Medora Leigh.
Ada’s Family
William, the Lord King, later the Earl of Lovelace: Ada’s husband
Hester, Charlotte and Locke King: William’s sisters and brother
Byron, the Lord Ockham, Annabella, and Ralph: Ada and William ‘s children
Greene, Miss Cooper and Dr William Carpenter: children’s attendants and tutors
Robert, Charles and Edward Noel: Ada’s Noel cousins
Ada’s Friends
Olivia (Livy) and Annabella Acheson: Lady Gosford’s daughters
Joanna Baillie: popular novelist
Charles Babbage: mathematician, scientist and inventor of Calculating Engines
Herschel Babbage: his son
Sir David Brewster: pioneer in optics, inventor of the kaleidoscope
Andrew Crosse: an experimenter in electricity
John and Robert Crosse: Andrew’s sons
Sophia Frend De Morgan: Dr Frend’s daughter who married Augustus De Morgan
Charles Dickens: novelist
Reverend Samuel Gamlen: Ada’s minister, who married Ada and William
Woronzow Greig: Mrs Somerville’s son from her first marriage, went to Cambridge University with Ada’s husband and became Ada’s friend, confidant and attorney
Sir John Cam Hobhouse: Lord Byron’s closest friend
Anna Jameson: author, helped out with Medora, Augusta Leigh’s daughter
Dr James Phillips Kay, later Sir Kay-Shuttleworth: Knighted for contribution to the establishment of public education in Great Britain
Frederick Knight: publisher, Somerset neighbour
Dr Locock: Ada’s doctor and friend
Malcolm and Nightingale: Ada’s so-called “sporting friends”
Harriet Martineau: scientific reporter
Hugh Montgomery: nephew of Mary Montgomery.
Fanny Smith: later Fanny Noel, illegitimate niece of Selina Doyle, married Edward Noel
Mary and Martha Somerville: daughters of the prominent scientist Mary Somerville
Sir Gardner Wilkinson: Egyptologist
Lord and Lady Zetland: owners of the horse Voltigeur
Teachers and Tutors
Dr William Frend: Lady Byron’s tutor who helped Ada as well
Dr William and Mary King: Lady Byron’s friends, lived in Brighton, associated with the Brighton Cooperative
Miss Lawrence: a Liverpool educator
William Turner: Shorthand tutor
Mary Somerville: prominent scientist
Miss D’ Espourria: harp teacher
Augustus De Morgan: leading mathematician, logician and actuary
Professor Faia: voice teacher
Homes
As a child: Bifrons, Mortlake and Fordhook
After her marriage, in London: St James’ Square, Manchester Square, Grosvenor Place, Cumberland St, 6 Great Cumberland Place
In Surrey: Ockham, East Horsley Towers
In Somerset: Ashley Combe, Porlock, Minehead
Horses
Sylph, Dubby, Flirt, Tam O’Shanter
Racing Horses: Flying Dutchman, Voltigeur, Teddington
TIME-LINE
YEAR
EVENT
1641
Blaise Pascal develops first calculating machine
1784
Augusta Mary Byron (Lord Byron’s half sister) is born
1788
Lord Byron (Ada’s father) is born
1791
Charles Babbage (Ada’s closest friend) is born
1792
Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke (Ada’s mother) is born
1793
Start of the Napoleonic Wars
1804
J.M.Jacquard invents apparatus to automate looms
1805
William King (Ada’s husband) is born
1811
The Luddites fight industrialization
Lord Byron’s maiden speech before Parliament. Lord Byron’s first major poetical work, Childe Harold, is published
1815
Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke wed (January 2) Augusta Ada Byron is born in London (December 10); Battle of Waterloo and the end of the Napoleonic Wars Steamers on the Thames
1816
Lord and Lady Byron separate (January 16) Lord Byron leaves England (April 25)
1822
Lady Noel (Lady Byron’s mother) dies
1824
Lord Byron dies in Greece (April 19)
1828
Ada designs a flying machine
1829
Ada gets the measles and becomes an invalid
1832
Parliament passes Reform Bill which expanded political power
1833
Ada slowly recovers and is presented at court; Ada meets Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine
1834
Babbage conceptualizes the Analytical Engine
1835
Ada weds William King (July 8)
1836
Ada’s first child, Byron, is born (May 12)
1837
Ada’s second child, Anne Isabella (Annabella), is born (September 22)
Victoria crowned - The Victorian Era begins
1838
William and Ada become Earl and Countess of Lovelace (June 30)
1839
Ada’s third child, Ralph Gordon, is born (July 2)
1840
Lord Lovelace becomes Lord Lieutenant of Surrey; Babbage goes to Italy to discuss the Analytical Engine; Ada begins studying mathematics with De Morgan
1841
Lady Byron reveals Ada’s “Most Strange and Dreadful History”
1842
Ada returns after a nine-month absence to her mathematical studies L.F. Menabrea’s description of the Analytical Engine published in Switzerland (October)
1843
Ada’s translation and Notes published (August)
1844
Ada visits the Crosse household in late November
1850
Ada visits her father’s ancestral home, Newstead Abbey
1851
The Great Exhibition, Queen Victoria’s ball and Derby Day
1852
Ada dies (November 27)
1860
Lady Byron dies (May 16)
1862
Byron, now the Viscount Ockham, dies