The modest girl proved that women can be mathematicians, invent new things, and even created the world's first steam computer program.
On December 10, 2015, the whole world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ada Augusta Lovelace, an extraordinary woman who has become a symbol for many feminists in the struggle for equal rights with men in the fields of science, mathematics and information technology. In the same year, Sidney Padua's graphic novel The Incredible Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage was released, and in 2017 it was published in Russian translation by Mann, Ivanov and Farber. We read it and chose the most interesting moments.
Story 01: Ada was the only legitimate child of the poet and Lord George Gordon Byron. Her mother, Anna Isabella Milbenk, was so afraid that little Ade would inherit viciousness, madness and a passion for poetry that she ran away with her child from her husband and tried to teach her daughter to mathematics, which she herself was very fond of. Because of this hobby, Byron mockingly called his wife "the princess of parallelograms."
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
Story 10: However, the mother's efforts were in vain. You can't fool nature, and at the age of 16, Ada had an affair with her stenography teacher. However, later, before the wedding, her family prepared documents, which said that the case "did not come to the final penetration."
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
Story 11: Mary Somerville became one of the first teachers for Ada. She was a famous mathematician and author of scientific publications, later even the first women's college in Oxford was named in her honor. Interestingly, unlike Lovelace, Mary Somerville's parents forbade her to study mathematics, fearing that the female body could not do it. Later, the well-known logician Augustus de Morgan expressed the same doubts, but this time about Ada. In his memoirs, Somerville recalls his father's words: "We must put an end to this if we don't want to see Mary in a straitjacket." So she would sneak candles into the bedroom and study in secret.
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
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Then Mary Somerville's education became even more complicated - her first husband considered mathematics not a woman's business, and she could not seriously engage in science until he died and Mary married a more agreeable person. Somerville's first publication was published when she was already in her 50s, but her last work, On Molecular and Microscopic Science, she wrote at the age of 85.
Story 100: It was Sommerville who introduced Ada to Charles Babbage, a notorious mathematician dubbed "the logarithmic Frankenstein." He was famous in academic circles for creating some kind of unimaginable calculating machine. However, it was always unfinished, unfinished and did not work as it should. However, Babbage continued to receive and spend grants for its development on a regular basis. But in the end, the government got tired of waiting and, having lowered a total of 17 thousand pounds on a non-existent vehicle (the approximate cost of two battleships), stopped funding, writing off everything to the expense. Of course, after that Babbage could no longer persuade anyone to give him money to continue his work.
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
He called his brainchild the Difference Engine, and its purpose was to calculate and print special mathematical tables for maritime navigation, engineering and accounting. Unfortunately, during his lifetime, Babbage became famous not at all for her, but for his manic struggle with street organ grinders, who pretty much pestered him and did not allow him to concentrate.
Story 101: Around the same time Babbage met Ada, he came up with the idea of a new Analytical Engine. It was inspired by the jacquard loom on punch cards. Many drawings and thousands of pages dedicated to this Machine from Babbage's notebooks have survived. The design of the Machine was constantly changing - Babbage continually corrected, improved, added and removed parts of the mechanism. In fact, it was a modern computer - with memory, processor, hardware and software, as well as a complex system of self-activating feedbacks. It only consisted of gears and levers and was steam powered. Imagine a giant steam computer in the early 19th century!
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
History 110: In 1840, Babbage lectured on the Analytical Engine at a conference in Turin, Italy. A few years later, engineer Luigi Menabrea published a summary of this lecture in a French journal.
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
Babbage later recalled: “The late Countess Lovelace translated Menabrea's article and told me about it. I asked why she hadn’t written her own work about the arrangement so well known to her … Lady Lovelace replied that such a thought had not occurred to her. Then I advised the Countess to add her own notes to Menabrea's article, and she immediately agreed. An original article written by a woman would have been quite unusual for the time, but there were precedents for women to translate and comment on men's work.
Lovelace added seven footnotes to her translation of The Analytical Engine Description, more than two and a half times the length of the article itself. Taken together, the translation itself and the footnotes occupied 65 pages of Taylor's Scientific Papers (the journal that published English translations of works from continental Europe) for September 1843.
Story 111: It was in these notes that Ada Lovelace laid the foundations for many of the ideas of modern computer science, such as loops, if-then conditionals, and separation of hardware and software layers. Moreover, Lovelace put forward the concept of a general-purpose computing device, proposing to go beyond solving mathematical equations and use the Machine to process information of any kind.
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
The notes contain several mathematical "programs" in the form of tables with numbers, where the step-by-step execution of complex calculations by the Machine is described. Naturally, Babbage himself did the outlines of simple programs; also preserved the programs of one of his assistants (who was distinguished by the neat handwriting, unlike Lovelace and Babbage). But, apparently, it was Ada who made the first most detailed and complete program, thanks to which she is sometimes called "the world's first programmer."
Without a doubt, Lovelace herself came up with an idea that later became the cornerstone of computer science: by operating with symbols according to given rules, automatic processes can process not only numbers, but also any other information. She wrote:
[Machine] can work not only with numbers, but also with other entities - if you associate them with objects, the relationships between which are described in the language of abstract operational science and adapted to the working notation and structure of the Machine. For example, by describing and adapting in this way the fundamental interrelationships of sounds in the discipline of musical composition and harmony, the Machine will be able to compose verified, technical pieces of music of any complexity and duration.
Story 1000: Ada, Countess of Lovelace, contracted uterine cancer a few years after the release of The Analytical Engine Description. “How terrifying I am these terrible torments - but, alas, it looks like they are in the Byrons' blood. I think an easy death is not for us,”Lovelace wrote to her mother in October 1851. As usual, Ada turned out to be frighteningly sagacious. She struggled with the disease for fourteen agonizing months and died two weeks before her 37th birthday. Legendary sister of mercy Florence Nightingale wrote to a friend about her death: "They say she only lasted so long thanks to the amazing vitality of her brain, which did not want to die."
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
Story 1001: But what if Charles Babbage was more persistent, found more money, and his muse, Ada Augusta Lovelace, lived longer? In that case, they probably would have made the first steam computer. Giant, monstrous, slow, but still awesome. This would give birth to the era of steam information technology.
This alternate-story plot inspired two cyberpunk classics Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. And they created a steampunk novel (steampunk) - all the conventions and realities characteristic of the cyberpunk genre were transferred to Victorian England of the 19th century. High tech is a bad life.
PHOTO "Mann, Ivanov and Farber"
Ferry-mechanical Differential Machines, reading information from punched cards, begin to play the same role there as personal computers - in the real world of the second half of the 20th century Inventors, thinkers, industrialists who introduce new technologies are en masse awarded the only preserved aristocratic title - lordship and place in the House of Lords and form a new estate. The cult of science is developing, the fashion for visiting museums, self-education, and reading educational publications is strongly supported.
Steam transport is developing successfully, especially automobile transport. The military gets automatic weapons. England's technological superiority makes it possible to win the Crimean War. Difference Machine programmers and operators are becoming prominent representatives of the new society. Massive cassettes with punched cards play the same role as today's electronic storage media, often becoming objects of struggle and causes of intrigue and crime.
The Main Difference Engine is a colossal steam-age mechanical supercomputer for controlling the subjects of the British Empire. Each subject has an index. As a result, this supercomputer turns into the All-Seeing Eye.
It would be one way or another, we will no longer know. But Ada Augusta Lovelace and Charles Babbage sowed the seeds of several ideas that sprout wildly a century and a half later - computing, information technology, and the equal participation of women in scientific research and intellectual work. All three ideas completely changed our world.
Story 1001.1: The simplest story in this kaleidoscope. And you probably already guessed what it is about? Yes, all of our stories are numbered in binary numbers. They are now used in modern Analytical Engines.
AGAFON SELITRENNIKOV