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Women in IT: The life story of Augusta Ada King Byron
Author: Syed Mansoor Sarwar
Augusta Ada was the first person to realise that numbers could represent objects other than
quantities, such as letters and musical notes.
It is a little known fact that a woman, Augusta Ada King Byron, is recognised as the world’s
first computer programmer. She wrote a step-by-step procedure, an algorithm, in 1843 to
compute Bernoulli numbers on the Analytical Engine, the calculating machine designed by
her mentor and ‘The Father of Computers’, Charles Babbage.
Born on December 10, 1815, Ada was . . . (Lord Byron’s daughter), one of the greatest and
most widely read British poets. She was named Augusta but Byron called her “Ada.” Byron
separated from his wife, Anne Isabella ‘Annabella’ Milbanke, when Ada was one month old.
Byron never saw Ada again.
Many eminent mathematicians and scientists of the 19th century, including the Scottish
mathematician and science writer, Mary Somerville, home schooled Ada in mathematics and
science. Somerville also introduced her to Charles Babbage in June 1833. A few days later,
Babbage invited her to see the model for his Difference Engine. She was fascinated to see the
machine and visited him often. Babbage was so impressed with Ada’s analytic skills that he
called this 17-year-old mathematics genius the ‘Enchantress of Number.’
The British mathematician, logician, and University of London professor, Augustus De
Morgan of De Morgan’s Laws fame also tutored her in advanced mathematics. Ada’s other
scientific acquaintances included Sir Charles Wheatstone of Wheatstone Bridge fame,
Michael Faraday of Faraday’s Law fame, and Charles Dickens, the greatest novelist of the
Victorian era.
In 1840, Babbage gave a talk at the University of Turin on his Analytical Engine. Luigi
Menabrea, a young Italian mathematician and engineer, transcribed Babbage’s lecture into
French and had it published in October 1842. During 1842-43, Ada spent about a year
translating Menabrea’s paper into English and augmenting it with her own notes about the
Analytical Engine.
In her notes, Ada described the function of the Analytical Engine with an illustrated step-bystep procedure to compute Bernoulli numbers. Her notes were published in Scientific
Memoirs, edited and published by Richard Taylor. In Ada’s biography titled, The Bride of
Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron’s Daughter, historian Benjamin Woolley writes that
the scientific community at the time appreciated Ada’s work, while Michael Faraday
described himself as a supporter of her writing.
Ada was also the first to realise that numbers could represent objects other than quantities,
such as letters and musical notes. She wrote, “[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other
things besides number, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of
any degree of complexity or extent.”
The historian of computing and Babbage specialist Doron Swade writes, ‘It is this
fundamental transition from a machine which is a number cruncher to a machine for
manipulating symbols according to rules that is the fundamental transition from calculation to
computation — to general-purpose computation — and looking back from the present high
ground of modern computing, if we are looking and sifting history for that transition, then
that transition was made explicitly by Ada in that 1843 paper.’ Essentially, Ada was first one
to comprehend that such a machine could be used in the way it is in today’s modern world.
In 1953, more than a century after her death, BV Bowden in Faster than Thought: A
Symposium on Digital Computing Machines republished Ada’s notes. The Analytical Engine
is now recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes are seen as a description of
a computer and software.
A few historians including Betty Alexandra Toole, Bruce Collier, Doron Swade, Dorothy
Stein, and Eugene Eric Kim disagree that Ada was the first computer programmer. They
argue that Babbage had written several programs between 1837 and 1840, much earlier than
Ada’s notes. They also claim that the program for computing Bernoulli numbers too was
written by Babbage and Ada only found an error in it.
Stephen Wolfram, an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society, disagrees with
these historians, “there’s nothing as sophisticated — or as clean — as Ada’s computation of
the Bernoulli numbers. Babbage certainly helped and commented on Ada’s work, but she was
definitely the driver of it.” All historians credit Ada for publicising the Analytical Engine,
publishing the first computer program, and seeing the potential of the Analytical Engine as a
computational machine that could deal with entities other than quantities.
Ada led a very difficult early life. Her mother did not care for her and often left Ada with her
own mother. However, Annabella did instil in Ada an interest in mathematics and logic. Ada
often remained ill and had severe headaches that blurred her vision when she was eight. At
14, she was hit by paralysis due to measles and remained bed ridden for over a year.
The US Department of Defence (DoD) developed the Ada language in her honour. The
reference manual for the language was approved in December 1980 and the standard for the
language was assigned number MIL-STD-1815, in commemoration of the year of Ada’s
birth. On March 8, 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary of Ada, “Ada
Lovelace, a Mathematician Who Wrote the First Computer Program.”
Many initiatives have been taken, mostly in the USA and UK, during the past three decades
to honour Ada, and to encourage young girls and women to pursue and excel in Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The Lovelace Medal and Ada Lovelace
Day by the British Computer Society, and Ada Developers Academy in Seattle, Washington
are just a few examples.
In Pakistan, where the population of women in these academic disciplines hovers around 25
percent, women account for only 14 percent of the IT workforce. It is imperative that we
initiate Women in STEM like programs in order to encourage and help girls to pursue
education and careers in these disciplines. Job Asaan, an employment facilitation hub for
women, initiated by the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women, is a good step in this
direction.