Ada Lovelace's birthday. The sharp mind of Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King(née Byron), Countess Lovelace(English) Augusta Ada King Byron, Countess of Lovelace), better known as Ada Lovelace(December 10, 1815, London, Great Britain - November 27, 1852, ibid.) - mathematician. Best known for creating description computer, the design of which was developed by Charles Babbage. She compiled the world's first program (for this machine). She coined the terms “cycle” and “work cell” and is considered the first programmer in history.
Born on December 10, 1815, Ada was the only legitimate child of the English poet George Gordon Byron and his wife Anna Isabella Byron (Anabella). Anna Isabella Byron better days his family life For her passion for mathematics, she received the nickname “Queen of Parallelograms” from her husband. In the first and last time Byron saw his daughter a month after her birth. On April 21, 1816, Byron signed an official divorce and left England forever.
The girl received her first name Augusta (Augusta) in honor of Byron's half-sister, with whom he was rumored to have had an affair. After the divorce, her mother and mother's parents never called her by that name, but called her Ada. Moreover, all of her father’s books were removed from the family library.
The mother of the newborn gave the child to her parents and went on a health cruise. She returned when it was time to start raising the child. Various biographies make different claims as to whether Ada lived with her mother: some claim that her mother took first place in her life, even in her marriage; according to other sources, she never knew either parent.
Mrs. Byron invited her former teacher- Scottish mathematician Augustus de Morgan and the famous Mary Somerville, who at one time translated from French “Treatise on Celestial Mechanics” by mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace. It was Mary who became a role model for her pupil.
When Ada turned seventeen, she was able to go out into society and was introduced to the king and queen. Young Miss Byron first heard the name Charles Babbage at the dinner table from Mary Somerville. A few weeks later, on June 5, 1833, they met for the first time. Charles Babbage, at the time they met, was a professor in the mathematics department at Cambridge University - like Sir Isaac Newton a century and a half before him. Later she met others outstanding personalities of that era: Michael Faraday, David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Charles Dickens and others.
A few years before taking office, Babbage completed the description of a calculating machine that could perform calculations accurate to the twentieth digit. A drawing with numerous rollers and gears, which were driven by a lever, lay on the Prime Minister’s desk. In 1823, the first subsidy was paid to build what is now considered the first computer on Earth, known as Babbage's Large Difference Engine. Construction lasted ten years, the design of the machine became increasingly complex, and in 1833 funding was stopped.
In 1835, Miss Byron married 29-year-old William King, 8th Baron King, who soon succeeded to the title of Lord Lovelace. They had three children: Byron, born May 12, 1836, Anabella (Lady Anne Blue), born September 22, 1837, and Ralph Gordon, born July 2, 1839. Neither her husband nor her three children prevented Ada from enthusiastically surrendering to what she considered her calling. Marriage even made her work easier: she had an uninterrupted source of funding in the form of the family treasury of the Earls of Lovelace.
In 1842, Charles Babbage was invited to the University of Turin to give a seminar on his Analytical Engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer and future Prime Minister of Italy, recorded the lecture in French, and it was subsequently published in Public Library Geneva in October of the same year. Babbage asked Countess Lovelace to translate Menabrea's notes into English and provide commentary on the text. Lady Lovelace spent more than a year for this work, after which the works were published under the acronym AAL and turned out to be more extensive than Menabrea's records. In one of his comments, Ada describes an algorithm for calculating Bernoulli Numbers on the Analytical Engine. It was recognized as the first program specifically implemented to be played on a computer, and for this reason Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer, despite the fact that Babbage's machine was never constructed during Ada's lifetime.
Ada Lovelace died on November 27, 1852 from bloodletting while trying to treat uterine cancer (her father also died from bloodletting) and was buried in the Byron family crypt next to her father, whom she never knew during her lifetime.
Memory
In 1975, the US Department of Defense decided to begin developing a universal programming language. The Minister read prepared by the secretaries historical excursion and without hesitation approved both the project itself and the proposed name for the future language - “Ada”. On December 10, 1980, the language standard was approved.
Ada Lovelace - photo
Ada Augusta Lovelace - 1815 - 1852 - the world's first programmer
Ada Augusta Lovelace was an English mathematician, daughter of the great English poet Byron.
In 1834, Ada Augusta visited Babbage's workshop for the first time and became acquainted with his difference engine. Mrs. de Morgan, who accompanied Ada, described this visit as follows: “While some of the guests looked in amazement at this device with the feeling with which, as they say, savages see a mirror for the first time or hear the shot of a gun, Miss Byron, still very young, was able to understand the operation of the machine and appreciated great dignity her inventions."
Ada Lovelace studied Charles Babbage's computer.
In 1843, Ada Lovelace developed the first programs for the Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage's computer, and founded theoretical basis programming. She first introduced the concept of "operation cycle". She expressed main idea that the analytical engine can solve problems that, due to the difficulty of calculations, are almost impossible to solve manually.
The first program included a conditional control program invented by Bubbage, repeating cycles of operations. Ada wrote the first programming textbook.
My brain is more than just a mortal substance, I hope time will tell...
...It is good for the Universe that my aspirations and ambitions are forever connected with the spiritual world
and that I'm not going to deal with sabers, poison and intrigue instead of X, Y and Z
A.A. Lovelace
How and why did practical programming in its modern sense appear? Like all other great inventions, it came from laziness. In 1946, the first electronic computer, ENIAC, was created. To change its calculation algorithm, you had to run around the room for a couple of days, connecting and disconnecting 6,000 switches. When scientists got tired of running, they started developing computers that understood programs in machine codes, and then they came up with programming languages.
Meanwhile, the theoretical foundations of modern programming were laid 100 years before the creation of the first computer. And the woman did it.
Ada Augusta Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815. She was the only legitimate daughter of the great English poet George Gordon Byron. Her mother Annabella Byron was an extraordinary woman, a fan of mathematics and philosophy, with a passion for exact sciences nicknamed in the world “the queen of parallelograms”. Is it any wonder that two bright personalities with such different inclinations could not get along together - soon after the birth of their daughter, the couple separated. Byron dedicated these lines to his daughter in the poem “ Childe Harold”:
"Daughter, little chick, dear Ada! To the mother
Do you look like your only relative?
On the day of that separation I could shine
There is blue hope in your eyes..."
Ada received an excellent upbringing and education - she played several musical instruments, knew languages, history, philosophy. But thanks to her mother’s efforts, the most important place in her education was the study of mathematics. Her teacher was the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan. In 1834 she was introduced to the outstanding mathematician Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first digital computer, which he called “analytical”. Babbage, an acquaintance of his mother, encouraged young Ada to study mathematics, corresponded with her, sent her science articles and books to study.
When Ada Augusta Byron began to appear in society, she created a sensation - both with her elegant, mysterious beauty and her brilliant logical mind. “ Angelic appearance, devilish mind” – contemporaries said about her. At that time, by the way, in society there was talk of scientific topics were in big fashion, and Ada has more than once baffled pundits in scientific disputes.
Contrary to the widespread belief that the ideal of any man is “charming, what a fool,” there were more than enough people who wanted to conquer the mysterious beauty. In 1835, Ada Byron married 29-year-old Lord King, who later became Earl of Lovelace. So clever woman, of course, chose a husband who encouraged and fully supported her scientific pursuits. According to contemporaries, their marriage was happy. The couple led a secular lifestyle, regularly held evenings and receptions on their estate, and they had three children.
The editor of Examiner magazine once described it as follows: “ She was amazing, and her genius was not poetic, but mathematical and metaphysical, her mind was in constant movement, which connected with great demands. Along with such masculine qualities as firmness and determination, Lady Lovelace was characterized by delicacy and refinement of the most refined nature. Her manners, tastes, education... were feminine in in a good way of this word, and the superficial observer could never have guessed the power and knowledge that lay hidden under female attractiveness.”
In the first 5 years of marriage, Ada had no time for science - she gave birth to two sons and a daughter one after another. However, in 1841, Ada Lovelace returned to her studies with Babbage and began studying his Analytical Engine.
In October 1842, the Italian mathematician L.F. Menabrea published the article "Essay on the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage." Ada translated this article to English language, and Babbage offered to give her his comments on the translation. It was these comments, larger in volume than the original text of the article, that went down in history. In them, Ada not only compiled the world's first description of the operation of a computer, but also wrote three programs for it, for the first time introducing many concepts that no programming language can do without today - working variables, assignments, loops, nested loops. This allows us to now say that it was she who laid the foundations of theoretical programming.
The first of them is a program for solving a system of two linear algebraic equations with two unknowns, the second one is for calculating values trigonometric function, the third is for calculating Bernoulli numbers. Ada herself, not only a brilliant scientist, but also a poetic woman, wrote to Babbage about her program: “I want to introduce an example in one of the notes: the calculation of Bernoulli numbers as an example of a machine calculating an undefined function without first solving it using the human head and hands. Am I a devil or an angel? I work like the devil for you, Charles Babbage; I’m sifting through Bernoulli’s numbers for you.”
Unfortunately, Lady Lovelace was in poor health and soon fell ill with cancer, from which she died at the age of 37, in 1852. But Babbage’s analytical engine remained a theory - it was ahead of its time and could not be completed during his lifetime, the technology of that time and the need for huge financial investments did not allow it. For example, at that time they did not know how to quickly process metal with the required degree of accuracy - and the project required thousands of gears alone.
“The essence and purpose of the machine will change depending on what information we put into it. The machine will be able to write music, draw pictures and show science ways that we have never seen anywhere.” . These words of Ada Lovelace turned out to be prophetic. She was able to see the purpose of a computer 100 years before it was created.
The Ada programming language, developed in 1980 by the US Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace.
December 10 is named Programmer's Day in honor of the first representative of this not too ancient profession, who was also born on this day.
Augusta Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815. She was only daughter the great English poet George Gordon Byron (1788 - 1824) and Annabella Byron, née Milbank (1792 - 1860). “She is an extraordinary woman, a poet, a mathematician, a philosopher,” Byron wrote about his future wife in 1813. Her parents separated when the girl was two months old, and she never saw her father again.
Ada inherited her mother’s love of mathematics and many of her father’s traits, including a similar emotional character.
Byron dedicated several touching lines to his daughter in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, but at the same time, in a letter to his cousin, he was worried in advance: “I hope that God will reward her with anything, but not a poetic gift...
Ada had an excellent upbringing. The study of mathematics occupied an important place in him, to a large extent under the influence of his mother. Her teacher was the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan.
Her first acquaintance with the outstanding mathematician and inventor Charles Babage, the creator of the first program-controlled digital computer, which he called “analytical,” dates back to 1834. Babbage, who knew Lady Byron, encouraged young Ada's passion for mathematics.
Babbage constantly monitored Ada's scientific pursuits; he selected and sent her articles and books, primarily on mathematical issues. Ada's studies were encouraged by her family's friends - Augustus de Morgan and his wife, the Sommervilles and others. Ada attends D. Lardner's public lectures on the machine.
Together with Sommerville and others, she visits Babbage for the first time and inspects his workshop. After her first visit, Ada began to visit Babbage often, sometimes accompanied by Mrs. de Morgan. In her memoirs, de Morgan described one of her first visits as follows: “While some of the guests looked in amazement at this amazing device with such a feeling, as they say, savages see a mirror for the first time or hear a shot from a gun, Miss Byron, still very young, was able to understand the operation of the machine and appreciated the great merit of the invention.”
Augusta Ada's family life was happy. In 1835, Ada Byron, aged nineteen, married 29-year-old Lord King, who later became Earl of Lovelace. The husband had nothing against his wife’s scientific pursuits and even encouraged her in them. True, valuing her highly mental capacity, he lamented: “What a great general you could have become!” The Lovelaces led a social lifestyle, regularly hosting receptions and evenings at their London home and country estate of Oakhut Park. Ada's marriage did not alienate her from Babbage; their relationship became even more cordial. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Babbage was attracted by the girl’s mathematical abilities. Subsequently, Babbage found in her a person who supported all his bold endeavors. Ada was almost the same age as him early deceased daughter. All this led to a warm and sincere attitude towards Ada for many years.
Ada was vertically challenged, and Babbage, when mentioning her, often called her a fairy. The editor of Examiner magazine once described her as follows: “She was amazing, and her genius (and she had genius) was not poetic, but mathematical and metaphysical, her mind was in constant motion, which was combined with great exactingness. Along with such masculine qualities as firmness and determination, Lady Lovelace was characterized by delicacy and refinement of the most refined nature. Her manners, her tastes, her education... were feminine in the good sense of the word, and a superficial observer could never have guessed the power and knowledge that lay hidden beneath her feminine attractiveness. As much as she disliked frivolity and banality, she loved to enjoy real intellectual society.
The Lovelace couple had a son in 1836, a daughter in 1838 and a son in 1839. Naturally, this took Ada away from mathematics for a while. But soon after the birth of her third child, she turns to Babbage with a request to find her a mathematics teacher. At the same time, she writes that she has the strength to go as far in achieving her goals as she wishes. Babbage, in a letter dated November 29, 1839, responds to Lovelace: “I think that your mathematical abilities are so obvious that they do not need testing. I made inquiries, but at present I have not been able to find a person whom I could recommend to you as a teacher. I will continue searching"
From the beginning of 1841, Lovelace began seriously studying Babbage's machines. In one of her letters to Babbage, Ada writes: “You must tell me basic information regarding your machine. I have good reason for wanting this." In a letter dated January 12, 1841, she outlines her plans: “...For some time in the future (maybe within 3 or 4, or perhaps even many years) my head may serve you for your purposes and plans... Exactly I want to have a serious conversation with you on this issue." This offer was gratefully accepted by Babbage. Since that time, their cooperation has not been interrupted and has produced brilliant results.
In October 1842, Menabrea's article was published, and Ada began translating it. They developed the plan and structure of the notes together. Having finished each note, Ada sent it to Babbage, who edited it, made various comments and sent it on. The work was transferred to the printing house on July 6, 1843.
The central point of Lovelace's work was the compilation of a program (numbers) for calculating Bernoulli numbers. Lovelace's comments included three of the world's first computer programs that she compiled for Babbage's machine. The simplest of them and the most detailed is a program for solving a system of two linear algebraic equations with two unknowns. When analyzing this program, the concept of work cells (work variables) was first introduced and the idea of sequentially changing their content was used. From this idea there is one step left to the assignment operator - one of the fundamental operations of all programming languages, including machine ones. The second program was compiled to calculate the values of the trigonometric function with repeated repetition of a given sequence of computational operations; For this procedure, Lovelace introduced the concept of a loop, one of the fundamental constructs of structured programming. The third program, designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers, already used recurrent nested loops. In her comments, Lovelace also expressed an excellent guess that computational operations could be performed not only with numbers, but also with other objects, without which computers would remain just powerful, high-speed calculators.
Since 1844, Ada Lovelace became more and more interested in racing, especially since she herself rode well and loved horses. Both Babbage and William Lovelace played at the races, and Babbage, who was interested in applied issues of probability theory, considered the game at the races from these positions and looked for the optimal gaming system. However, both Babbage and Ada's husband relatively soon abandoned participation in the game. But Ada, passionate and stubborn, continued to play. Moreover, Lady Ada became close to a certain John Cross, who blackmailed her. She spent almost all her funds and by 1848 had incurred large debts. Then her mother had to pay off these debts, and at the same time buy the incriminating letters from John Cross. In the early 50s, the first signs of the disease that claimed the life of Ada Lovelace appeared.
In November 1850 he wrote to Babbage: “My health... is so bad that I want to accept your offer and appear to your medical friends upon arrival in London.” Despite the measures taken, the disease progressed and was accompanied by severe suffering. On November 27, 1852, Ada Lovelace died before the age of 37. Along with her outstanding intellect, her father also passed on this terrible heredity to her - early death- the poet died at the same age... She was buried next to her father in the Byron family crypt.
Success came to her with great stress and not without damage to her health. We managed to do little on our own short life Augusta Ada Lovelace. But the little that came from her pen inscribed her name in the history of computational mathematics and computer technology as the first programmer. The ADA language, developed in 1980, is one of the universal programming languages, named in memory of Ada Lovelace. This language was widely used in the United States, and the US Department of Defense even approved the name “Ada” as the name of a unified programming language for the American military, and later for the entire NATO.
There are also two names in America in honor of Ada Lovelace. small towns- in the states of Alabama and Oklahoma. There is also a college named after her in Oklahoma.
Ada Byron Lovelace added comments to her translation of the article “Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine” that were three times the length of the original text. They secured its place in computer history, as it was later recognized as the first detailed description of it, including what is now called software. In recognition of her advanced ideas 100 years ahead of its time, the US Department of Defense named a programming language after her in 1980.
Her father's daughter
In contrast to her father, the famous English romantic poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace (the photo of her portrait is given below) chose to engage in a more objective field of activity - mathematics. Nevertheless, she turned out to be similar to him. Despite her mother's attempts to suppress any Byronic tendencies in her, her passion was just as strong.
By studying a discipline that very few women pursued, Ada went against traditional Victorian society. Her passion for mathematics can be seen in her "Notes" on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a computing device that was never built. Lovelace wrote with great insight, and her ideas about the capabilities of this device became a reality in twentieth-century computers, securing her place in the history of mathematics and computer science.
Early biography
Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10, 1815 in London. She was the only one legitimate child famous English poet. 5 weeks after Ada was born, her mother left her oppressive husband. On April 24, 1816, the divorce took place, and Lord Byron left England forever. Ada never saw her father again because he died 8 years later in Greece. Nevertheless, he corresponded with Lady Byron regarding her welfare and studies. He also wrote about her in his poems. A line, dedicated to my daughter, can be found in Canto 3 of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
After the divorce, Lady Byron took control of Ada's upbringing, suppressing any undesirable character traits she might have inherited from her father.
The mother insisted on studying mathematics primarily because this discipline represented for her the direct opposite of everything that was associated with her depraved husband: dangerous fantasies, melancholic moods, evil and even madness. This science was for her a means of achieving moral discipline. So she made a schedule for her daughter's education, emphasizing music (as a social tool) and arithmetic (to train the mind).
Love for numbers
In the early adolescence Ada Lovelace realized that she had a real passion for numbers, similar to her father's passion for poetry. Lady Byron provided for her the best teachers, such as the Cambridge mathematician William Friend, who taught astronomy, algebra and geometry, and the mentor August De Morgan - the first professor of mathematics at the newly founded University of London. He spoke of Ada as an original researcher, perhaps of the first magnitude.
This passion did not leave her for the rest of her life. Thus, in an 1843 letter to Babbage, Lovelace expressed the hope that one more year of study would make her something of an analyst: the more she studied, the more she wanted to be one. She wrote that “her father was not the kind of poet that she was going to be, the analyst (and metaphysician) she was going to be.”
Countess Lovelace
July 8, 1835 Ada Byron married William King. In 1838 he became first Earl and she became Countess Lovelace. IN next year her husband also became Lord Lieutenant of Surrey. He was 11 years older than her and considered somewhat limited, but he was proud of his wife's mathematical talents and supported her efforts.
Her husband's approval was quite fortunate for Lady Ada Lovelace, since few women of her position in Victorian England were allowed to pursue academic interests of any kind. Aristocrats considered this profession unworthy of their position. For this reason, Lovelace signed her works with initials. Consequently, her passion for mathematics was constrained not only by her gender, but also by her status.
Meet Babbage
Ada Lovelace first met Charles Babbage when she was 18 years old. This happened at a party organized by the most famous female scientist of the 19th century - Mary Fairfax Somerville. Despite the fact that Babbage was 23 years older, he became her good friend and intellectual mentor.
Ada became interested in the works as soon as she saw them. The ideal opportunity to study them came in 1840, after Babbage's Turin lecture. The Italian military engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea wrote an article about the lecture and published it in 1842 in a French edition. The translation of the article from French into English and accompanying comments by Lovelace were published in one of the issues of the prestigious series of foreign scientific works Scientific Memoirs.
"Notes"
The first lady of programming, Ada Lovelace, designated her 7 “Notes” with letters from A to G. The word “computer” in the 19th century. denoted a device that performed only arithmetic operations, or a person whose task was to add numbers. That's why Lovelace didn't use it.
In "Note A" she defined the differences between Babbage's difference engines and Babbage's analytical engines. This explanation was significant in the sense that it described the computer general purpose, invented only 100 years later. In "Note B", Lovelace discussed the concept of computer memory and the ability to insert comments into a program. This idea is similar to the current practice of using the REM, or non-executable, statement.
In Note C, Lovelace extended the method to allow operation cards to be inserted in such an order that they could be used again and again, like a loop or subroutine.
"Note D" is a very complex explanation of how to write a program. Note E emphasizes the versatility of the Analytical Engine and outlines short description operating cards indicating cycles, corresponding to modern function keys. In Note F, Lovelace explained how the Analytical Engine can decide complex problems and fix errors. It would make it possible to solve problems that are impossible due to limitations in time, labor resources and financial resources.
The last and probably the most mathematically complex and most cited is "Note G". In it, Ada formulated the "Lady Lovelace Objection" or, in more modern phrasing, the principle of "garbage in, garbage out." She wrote that the output of a computer is no worse than the information that enters it.
"Note G" contains a factual illustration by programmer Ada Lovelace of how a machine can calculate a table of Bernoulli numbers (pictured above).
Disease Control
Ada Lovelace's biography is marked by numerous illnesses. As a child she had measles and scarlet fever. Lord Byron was informed about the state of his daughter's health. She exhibited “symptoms of fullness of the vessels of the head, in varying degrees manifested in different time They were not severe, but they never went away. Since Ada's father suffered from the same condition until she was 14, it is possible that her migraines were hereditary.
In 1829, Lovelace suffered from an unspecified illness that left her unable to move for many months. She also had seizures. It has been suggested that they were due to her mental, and not physical condition. However, none of these diseases became permanent. Lovelace danced well, rode horses and did gymnastics. Only uterine cancer proved insurmountable for her.
Passion for mathematics and gambling
Ada Lovelace's life was fraught with difficulties that she created for herself. She had a passion not only for mathematics, but also for mathematicians. It is known that Ada had affairs with several men, whose attention she initially sought on an intellectual level. Her relationship with John Crosse turned out to be the most destructive. She pawned her husband's diamonds to pay his gambling debts, and it is possible that he was blackmailing her. Lovelace also had a penchant for gambling and asked some male friends to place bets for her.
Place in history
Ada Lovelace's passions far exceeded the capabilities of her body. She died on the evening of November 27, 1852 from uterine cancer at the age of 36. She was the same age as her father when he died. According to her will, she was buried next to her father in the family crypt at Hucknall Torquard, near Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.
Although Lovelace's Notes were well received by her acquaintances, there is no record of how they were received general public. In fact, it did not become widely accepted until the historian Lord Bowden discovered the Notes in 1952 and reprinted them the following year, 110 years after the original publication.
Posthumous fame was probably not what Lovelace wanted during her lifetime. However, she would undoubtedly be pleased that a programming language was named after her fourth generation. Ada Byron Lovelace is the first programmer and interpreter of the workings of a computer. She was also a remarkable woman, interesting both for her motives and for her work, illustrating the clash of creative energy with repressed passion.