Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers:Poetical Science Read online

  1871

  Charles Babbage dies (October 18)

  1890

  Hollerith of the United States uses the punch card for sorting and tabulating information for the United States Census

  1893

  Lord Lovelace dies (December 29)

  1931

  Vannevar Bush of MIT builds the first “modern large analog” computer

  1946

  ENIAC - First digital computer built

  1974

  Proposal by military for a common high-order computer language

  1975

  First iteration of the language called Strawman, second iteration called Woodenman

  1978

  A winning language selected after extensive review

  1980

  Language named “Ada” in her honour

  1984

  “Ada” becomes a trademark of the United States Department of Defense

  Scientific Trinity

  Some people consider Ada Lovelace to be the mother of computing but others do not. If you think like a computer, that something is either true or not true, you will miss the beauty and meaning of this story. Ada was a human being, not an archetype or stereotype. When we get beyond a 0 or 1 mentality we will move into the quantum era, not just in thought, but in reality. I think it will give all of us more power.

  I am revising “Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer” published in 1992 to describe a three-step process: observation, interpretation and integration. In this era of 0s and 1s, digital and analog, it is important that the first stage is just to observe information, as free from a mind-set as possible. My first book involves observation since it contains original resources that allow us to gather the facts and evidence.

  The second step is interpretation. Despite the bad press Ada Lovelace often received, she did indeed predict the impact of today’s computer revolution and write a table of instructions, a program, indicating how a machine could calculate a complicated algorithm. My first revision called “Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, Prophet of the Computer” published in 1998, heralded her ability and skills.

  The third step is integration, which is essential in this digital age. A strategy that worked for Ada Lovelace in 1843 is still critical today; she called it “poetical science.” It is the ability to integrate both imagination and science. She used this strategy to study subjects like mathematics and science, which at first she regarded as duty but when she used this strategy it became a joy and passion.

  Poetical Science

  At the end of every chapter there will be a short footnote, some questions or an activity that promotes the integration of imagination and science, what Ada called “poetical science.” This style of thinking gave Ada the ability to have both a broad vision of the future as well as being grounded in the subject. Sometimes this footnote will be an activity, sometimes just the latest information about how and who uses this style of integrative thinking.

  I love Douglas Hofstadter using the title “I am a Strange Loop” for the title of his excellent book. I would like to start this integration of human skills with math and science by constructing a strange loop, a Möbius Strip.

  I have found this excellent description on the website:

  scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/math/Mobius.html.

  Also check out

  http://www.mathworld.wolfram.com/MoebiusStrip.html

  The Möbius Strip

  1. Start with a long rectangle (ABCD) made of paper.

  2. Give the rectangle a half twist.

  3. Join the ends so that A is matched with D and B is matched with C.

  This curious surface is called a Möbius Strip or Möbius Band, named after August Ferdinand Möbius, a nineteenth century German mathematician and astronomer, who was a pioneer in the field of topology. Möbius, along with his better known contemporaries, Riemann, Lobachevsky and Bolyai, created a non-Euclidean revolution in geometry.

  Möbius strips have found a number of surprising applications that exploit a remarkable property they possess: one-sidedness. Joining A to C and B to D (no half twist) would produce a simple belt-shaped loop with two sides and two edges -- impossible to travel from one side to the other without crossing an edge. But, as a result of the half twist, the Möbius Strip has only one side and one edge!

  To demonstrate this, (1) start midway between the “edges” of a Möbius Strip and draw a line down its center; continue the line until you return to your starting point. Did you ever cross an edge? (2) Next, hold the edge of a Möbius Strip against the tip of a felt-tipped highlighter pen. Color the edge of the Möbius Strip by holding the highlighter still and just rotating the Mobius Strip around. Were you able to color the entire edge? (3) Now, with scissors cut the Mobius Strip along the center line that you drew. Then draw a center line around the resulting band, and cut along it. Did you predict what would happen?

  1. Giant Möbius Strips have been used as conveyor belts (to make them last longer, since “each side” gets the same amount of wear) and as continuous-loop recording tapes (to double the playing time). In the 1960’s Sandia Laboratories used Möbius Strips in the design of versatile electronic resistors. Free-style skiers have christened one of their acrobatic stunts the Möbius Flip.

  1

  Child of Love,

  Nurtured in Convulsion

  [1815-1816]

  Augusta Ada Byron was born on Sunday afternoon, 10 December 1815 at 13 Piccadilly Terrace in London. Her father wrote she was “the child of love—though born in bitterness, and nurtured in convulsion.”

  Ada’s parents had battling perceptions of how we understand the world. When Lord Byron, the famous poet, was courting Ada’s mother Annabella Milbanke, he referred to her as “The Princess of Parallelograms.” He later condemned her mathematical thinking as “squaring her notions to the Devil knows what.” Criticism flew both ways, Byron was dubbed “mad and bad” by a disgruntled lover. Later Annabella wrote Byron a famous letter cautioning him not to “versify”—a strange admonishment to make to a poet!

  Lord Byron

  Lady Byron

  Despite reservations, the marriage proceeded on 2 January 1815. Ada was conceived the beginning of March, about the time that they went to visit Augusta (Byron’s half-sister), a visit that Lady Byron would remember and replay for the rest of her life. During the visit Lady Byron analyzed every move, watched every interaction of Augusta and Byron, and determined that she would be their guardian and save them from the evil, real or imagined, that was between them. Byron did not recall that anything extraordinary happened on the visit. He was drunk some of the time, and was beginning to have very serious financial worries. Lady Byron’s family had not given him the money promised in the marriage settlement agreement, and living in London was expensive.

  Several weeks after Ada was born, Lady Byron took Ada to visit her parents. She most likely voiced her suspicions about what she considered Byron’s incestuous relationship with Augusta. Her father informed Byron that Lady Byron wanted a separation. Byron admitted there were problems but he protested. What happened next has been the subject of hundreds of books.

  Byron knew about the various allegations against him but was furious when he received a paper from Lady Byron’s attorneys that stated: “Lady B. positively affirms that she has not at any time spread reports injurious to Lord Byrons [sic] character.” Hobhouse, his friend, and Byron, reading this document, considered it clearly “the bribe for separation.” Hobhouse described: “Byron was indignant . . . I said the disavowal was in itself not sufficient. Lady Byron must not only disavow the rumours having been spread but that the specific charges – that is incest and . . . made no part of her charges.”

  Byron agreed to the separation, left England on 25 April 1816, and later dubbed Lady Byron the “Mathematical Medea.” Augusta Ada, from that time on, was called Ada. Ada’s custody was not solved as simply. She was
made a Ward of Chancery and put in Lady Byron’s sole custody. Byron was afraid Lady Byron might take Ada to a foreign country where the law would allow him no parental control. In January 1817 he wrote Augusta and she forwarded the letter to Lady Byron. He wrote: “I require an explicit answer that Ada shall not be taken out of the country on any pretext whatever. . . I repeat that I have no desire to take the child from her, while she remains in England, but I demand that the infant shall not be removed. . .” Byron won that battle.

  Ada’s heritage consisted of two diametrically opposed points of view: her mother, the archetype of the new industrial age who could use analysis, facts, and objectivity to gain her clearly defined goals, and her father, the romantic poet, who took life as it came without predetermined goals and used imagination to view the world through a subjective lens. This conflict was especially difficult for Ada since her parents separated when she was only five weeks old. Yet, throughout her life her father’s heritage could not be ignored. In frustration, Ada verbalized this struggle when she wrote in an undated fragment to Lady Byron: “You will not concede me philosophical poetry. Invert the order! Will you give me poetical philosophy, poetical science?” Lady Byron never saw the connection.

  Poetical Science

  What makes a wise man wise? This was a riddle Ada’s daughter sent to her mother and it is a good place to start. The answer: he asks a lot of “whys.” Be curious.

  A good way to exercise your curiosity is to interview other people. This activity is designed to work with a group of people. It works especially well with people who are meeting for the first time.

  - Everyone pair up with a partner.

  - Each person’s job is to interview the other person about mathematics, science and computers by asking a series of 10 questions. Write your questions first, then ask them of the other person.

  - Use the answers you get to introduce your partner to the rest of the group.

  - Notice how the questions you ask influence the answers.

  When I taught History of Science in a program for extremely gifted students at University of California at Berkeley, I used this activity to get them to know one another. This activity also served another function because they learned that how you ask questions often determines the answers.

  2

  The Death of a Father, Cats and Flying Machines

  [1816-1828]

  Lady Byron had sole custody of Ada. She tried to protect Ada from the notoriety of being Lord Byron’s daughter by keeping her out of the limelight. If there were a People magazine at that time, Byron would no doubt have been on the cover and his family tormented by the paparazzi. Ada spent the first seven years of her life in several rented homes far from London. When her mother went off for health cures, Ada was left with her grandparents or Lady Byron’s spinster friends, Louisa Chaloner, Mary Montgomery, and Selina Doyle.

  Lord Byron went off to the continent. Despite Lady Byron’s attitude towards Augusta the communication between Lord and Lady Byron continued through Augusta. Byron sent collection of gifts for Augusta’s children and a crystal specifically for Ada. He spent the summer of 1816 in Switzerland with Percy and Mary Shelley. The movie “Gothic” described the events that summer on the shores of Lake Geneva when Mary Shelley conceived the story Frankenstein, now considered the first story about artificial intelligence, and Byron wrote the poem Darkness, describing the end of the world.

  When Ada was two years old, Lady Byron decided that she would write her autobiography to protect Ada from “the poetical colouring of circumstance.” Lord Byron retaliated in his epic poem “Don Juan” by drawing a thinly veiled characterization of Lady Byron in his description of Donna Inez, whose “favourite science was . . . mathematical . . . her thoughts were theorems, her words a problem . . . she was a walking calculation . . . in short . . . a prodigy.” And that was precisely what Lady Bryon expected Ada to be—a mathematical prodigy. Lady Byron was determined that Ada would be a mathematician and a scientist, not a poet like her father.

  According to Lady Byron Ada was a most precocious child, especially in the field of mathematics. She supervised Ada’s rigorous education from the time she was four years old. Ada was taught by a variety of governesses who never lasted very long. When Lady Byron could not find a suitable governess, she taught Ada herself. Discipline was strict. Lady Byron set up a system of reward and punishment. Ada was given paper “tickets” when she performed well, and the “tickets” were confiscated when she did not meet her mother’s expectations. When “tickets” did not motivate Ada to do her lessons, she was put in a closet until she realized the error of her ways. Though both Dr Frend (Lady Byron’s tutor) and Augusta cautioned Lady Byron about putting pressure on five-year-old Ada to learn from dawn to dusk, Lady Byron proceeded with her “system” of education. When Ada remarked that she wished that she could get to the end of arithmetic, she was reprimanded. Ada recognized her error and wrote in her journal for Lady Byron’s inspection, “I was rather foolish in saying that I did not like arithmetic and to learn figures, when I did—I was not thinking quite what I was about. The sums can be done better, if I tried, than they are.”

  It was on Sundays, when Ada did not have formal classes, that the theories of the Swiss educator Pestalozzi were integrated into Ada’s educational program. Pestalozzi was one of the first educators to gear instruction to the level of the child by using concrete objects. Working with blocks, Ada had to form a design. Ada’s governess, Miss Lamont, was pleased with how animated Ada became and how she took more pleasure “in imagining for herself as she proceeded” than in being guided by a model. This was a very astute observation because Ada followed that pattern throughout her life.

  Ada 1819

  During Byron’s time in Italy he produced volumes of epic poetry and prose. A picture of Ada was always on his desk. In his letters to Augusta he expressed his interest in the direction of Ada’s education: he wanted her to learn music and Italian. When Lady Byron reported that Ada was interested in mechanical things, Lord Byron was not disappointed. “One poet in the family was enough,” he remarked. Lady Byron was relieved. She was anxious to see that Ada’s imagination was bounded by mechanical and mathematical facts. Conflicting emotional and intellectual seeds were planted in her childhood. In the foreground was the factual, scientific, technological world of her omnipresent mother, and in the background was the amorphous image of the romantic absent father.

  When Ada was seven and a half years old, she became very ill with a mysterious disease that affected her eyesight and gave her headaches. Her education was halted on doctor’s orders. Lord Byron heard about the illness in 1823, soon after he arrived in Greece to help liberate Greece from the Ottoman Empire and was so disturbed that he could not even write in his journal. He was relieved to receive a letter in early 1824 detailing Ada’s improvement.

  Ada was never to know her father. In April 1824 Lord Byron became ill with the flu and died in Missolonghi, Greece at the age of thirty-six. According to the account of his valet Fletcher, the last words Lord Byron spoke were: “Oh, my poor dear child! – my dear Ada! my God, could I have seen her! Give her my blessing . . .”

  When Lady Byron informed Ada of her father’s death, Ada cried. Lady Byron concluded that it was for her, not her father, for how could the child feel sadness for a father she had not known.

  Lord Byron’s body was carried back to England on the ship the Florida, and huge crowds watched the funeral entourage of forty-seven carriages pass through the streets of London. Several of his friends urged that Byron be buried at Westminster Abbey, but perhaps because of the notoriety of the separation and Byron’s reputation as being “mad and bad,” he was buried instead near his ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in a small village church at Hucknall Torkard.

  Ada could not help but wonder who her father was. When she asked her mother whether a father and a grandfather were the same, she was so severely rebuffed by her mother (as Ada recounted almost thirty years later
to her attorney, Woronzow Greig) that she “acquired a feeling of dread toward her mother that continued till the day of her death.”

  Byron’s cousin George Anson Byron, a naval officer, became the seventh Lord Byron. The new Lord Byron was a close friend of Lady Byron’s, and he went with his family, including his son George (who was eighteen months younger than Ada) to visit Lady Byron and Ada. Ada pleaded with her mother to have George come to live with her as she did not have siblings or many friends, but Lady Byron did not agree to Ada’s request. One of the first letters Ada wrote is edged in black in memory of the death of her father.

  Since George did not go to live with Ada, she turned for comfort to her cat, Mrs. Puff. Animals were to play a great part in Ada’s life, especially since Lady Byron was often absent on health cures or busy being a “good Samaritan.” Ada watched her cat, describing vividly Puff’s activities. Nothing escaped her attention.

  By 1825 the Wentworth estate, Lady Byron’s legacy, had been settled when Lady Noel, Ada’s grandmother, had passed away. Lady Byron was a very wealthy woman, even by the standards at the time. In addition to estates in Leicestershire that she rented out, she also owned coal mines. Throughout her life she was an astute investor and managed to increase her holdings.