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  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

  Michael Faraday: pioneer of electricity

  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

  1812

  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