In 1833, the English scientist, professor at Cambridge University Charles Babbage (1792-1871) developed a project for an analytical machine - a giant adding machine with program controlled, arithmetic and storage devices. Babbage's Analytical Engine was not only a predecessor, but also in many respects a prototype of modern electronic computers with program control.
Ch. Babbage's collaborator and assistant in many of his scientific researches was Lady Lovelace (née Byron). Lady Lovelace's only scientific work related to "programming questions for Babbage's Analytical Engine" and anticipated the foundations of modern programming for digital computers with program control.
Augusta Ada Lovelace, daughter of the great English poet George Byron, was born on December 10, 1815. Family life J. Byron was unsuccessful - after a year life together the couple separated forever. His wife Annabella Milbanke (1792-1860) was a gifted person. She loved mathematics and studied it from childhood until her marriage.
The Byrons' daughter is Ada, following the example of her mother. youth I was interested in mathematics. Young Ada's passion was supported by Lady Byron's friends - the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan (1806-1871), his wife, amateur mathematician Mary Sommerville, and Charles Babbage.
In July 1835, Ada married William, eighteenth Lord King, who later became the first Earl of Lovelace. Ada had a son in May 1836, a daughter in February 1838, and a second son at the end of 1839. But neither family worries nor Ada’s poor health shook her determination to study mathematics.
February 22, 1841 Ada informs Babbage that he is working on issues related to his computers. At this time, Babbage worked hard to improve the structure of the Analytical Engine. But another issue was also important for the scientist at that time - getting the government to finance the construction of an analytical engine. This required popularization of the idea of automatic calculations, a clear and understandable presentation of the principles of operation of the analytical engine for the general public. A competent assistant would not have hurt him at all.
In October 1842, the Italian mathematician L.F. Menabrea published the article “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage.” Soon after the essay appeared, Ada Lovelace translated it. Babbage suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's sketch.
Ada Lovelace liked this idea and immediately began to implement it. Ada worked very hard, with a lot of tension. She handed the pages of notes to Babbage, who looked through them and either sent them back with comments or passed them on to the printer.
On July 19, 1843, Ada reported to Babbage that she herself had “compiled a list of operations for calculating every coefficient for every variable,” i.e. wrote a program to calculate Bernoulli numbers. In August of the same year, a translation of Menabrea's article and "Notes" were published. IN certain circles Ada Lovelace gained worldwide fame.
In the early 50s. Ada shows the first signs of cancer, and on November 27, 1852, Ada died a few days short of her 37th birthday, the same age as Lord Byron. According to her will, she was buried (December 3) next to her father's grave in the Byron family crypt in Nottinghamshire.
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. Babbage's Analytical Engine was never built, and the programs written by Ada Lovelace were never debugged or worked, but a number of statements made by Lovelace in 1843 about general provisions programming (the principle of saving work cells, the connection of recurrent formulas with cyclic calculation processes, etc.) have retained their fundamental importance for modern programming.
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. She is best known for creating a description of a 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 In her 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. IN various biographies There are various claims made 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 by the Public Library of Geneva in October of that 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.
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We present to your attention a selection of facts about Ada Lovelace, the first female programmer.
The name of this woman became famous only 100 years after her death. However, Ada Lovelace continues to remain in the shadow of her male colleagues today: there is no mention of her in school textbooks, modern authors do not pay due attention to her personality, being content with the meager data of someone’s diaries and correspondence. We tried to collect the most significant facts of her biography.
- Ada Lovelace, or Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (Augusta Ada King Byron, Countess of Lovelace) - the only legitimate daughter of the world famous English romantic poet - George Byron. Due to a series of tragic circumstances (one of which was a divorce from Ada's mother, Anna Byron (née Milbank)), in 1816 Lord Byron was forced to leave England forever. Ada never had to see her father again. In addition to several poems, lines dedicated to Ada can be found in the 3rd part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
- Ada's mother was most afraid that her daughter would inherit her father's restless temperament and passion for poetry. Despite all her mother’s efforts, Ada adopted her father’s eccentricity and craving for poetry, but her main passion became. The teachers were the famous Scottish mathematician and logician August de Morgan And Mary Somerville, author of the translation of “Treatise on Celestial Mechanics”.
- At the age of 17, Ada met Charles Babbage, creator of the first digital computer. Despite the 24-year age difference, Babbage becomes not just a teacher and colleague for Ada, but also a close friend who supports her in all her endeavors.
- In October 1842, an article by an Italian engineer was published Luigi Manabrea, dedicated to Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. The scientist asked Countess Lovelace to translate the article into English. Ada not only translated the text, but also supplemented it with her own comments, increasing the original amount of work by 3 times.
Ada's comments were presented three world's first computing programs, compiled by her for Babbage's machine:
- a program for solving two linear algebraic equations in two unknowns; when analyzing this program, the concept of “working cells” (working variables) was first introduced, and the idea of sequentially changing their content was voiced;
- a second program was compiled to calculate the values trigonometric function with repeated repetition of a given sequence of computational operations; for this program, Ada introduced the concept of "loop", one of the fundamental constructs of structured programming;
- in the third program, designed to calculate Bernoulli digits, Ada used recurrent nested loops.
- In comments to the work, Ada expressed her guess that computational operations can be applied not only to numbers, but also to other objects.
- Was married to William King, had three children. She led a social lifestyle and was friends with Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens and other famous personalities.
- Her recordings were reissued in the work of B. I. Bowden "Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines" in 1953, which caused a surge of interest in the name Ada Lovelace.
- She died at the age of 36 from cancer. She was buried in the Byron family crypt, next to her father.
- In 1979, the US Department of Defense developed a single one for embedded systems. The language was named "Ada", in honor of Ada Lovelace.
- One of the dates for celebrating Programmer's Day falls on December 10- Ada Lovelace's birthday.
Babbage's automatic machine
Literature to familiarize yourself with the works and biography of Ada Lovelace:
- Moore, Doris Langley-Levy “Countess of Lovelace: Byron’s Legitimate Daughter”;
- Wade, Mary Dodson “Ada Byron Lovelace: the Lady and the Computer.” 1994. Grades 7-9;
- Toole, Betty A. and Ada King Lovelace “Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age.” 1998;
- Woolley, Benjamin “The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron’s Daughter.” 2000.
Augusta Ada King(née Byron), Countess Lovelace(English) Augusta Ada King Byron, Countess of Lovelace), known as Ada Lovelace- English scientist, mathematician. She is known mainly for creating a description of a computer, the design of which was developed by Charles Babbage, with whom she worked in tandem for many years.
early years
Born December 10, 1815 in London. Ada was the only legitimate child of the English poet George Gordon Byron and his wife Anna Isabella Byron. Anna Byron, in the best days of her family life, received from her husband the nickname “Queen of Parallelograms” for her passion for mathematics. On April 21, 1816, Ada's father, the poet Byron, signed an official divorce and left England forever. The first and last time Byron saw his daughter was a month after birth.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 her mother's parents (who, according to some sources, were the initiators of her daughter's divorce) never called her by this name, but called her Ada. Moreover, all of her father’s books were removed from the family library.
Ada Byron compiled the first computer program, for which her descendants called her “the first programmer.” Ada Byron, like her mother, successfully and enthusiastically studied mathematics from childhood. Ada's teacher was the famous English mathematician and logician Augustus de Morgan. Among the friends of her mother, Annabella Milbank, was the outstanding English scientist and inventor Charles Babbage. Young Ada visits his workshop, where she learns about his work on computers. Charles Babbage sincerely fell in love with this girl; he found in her the main thing that he valued in people - sharpness of mind. Perhaps the fact that Ada was almost the same age as him early on also played a role deceased daughter. Babbage follows Ada's scientific pursuits, sends her articles and books of interest, and introduces her to his work.
Augusta Ada's family life was happy. In July 1835 she married William, eighteenth Lord King, who later became the first Earl of Lovelace. Sir William, who was 29 years old at the time, was a calm, even-tempered and affable man. He approved of his wife's scientific pursuits and helped her as best he could. They had three children: Byron, born May 12, 1836, Anabella (Lady Anne Blue), born September 22, 1837, and Ralph Gordon, born July 2, 1839. Her husband and three children did not prevent 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.
The rise of scientific activity
In 1842, Charles Babbage was invited to the University of Turin to give a seminar on his Analytical Engine. Military engineer L. F. Menabrea (later a general in Garibaldi's army and then Prime Minister of Italy) wrote the article "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage." Ada was interested in this material, and she translated it into English language. After which Babbage suggested that she add some notes to the translation. The translation of Menabrea's article takes 20 pages, while Ada Lovelace's notes are two and a half times the size of the article and take up almost 50 pages. This fact demonstrates that A. A. Lovelace did not limit herself to the role of a simple commentator. Moreover, Menabrea's article deals more with the technical side of the matter, while Lovelace's notes deal with the mathematical side.After receiving the first proofs, she writes to Babbage: “I want to insert in one of my notes something about Bernoulli numbers as an example of how an implicit function can be calculated by a machine without first being solved by the human head and hands. Send I need the data and formulas." At her request, Babbage sent all the necessary information and, wanting to save Ada from difficulties, he himself compiled an algorithm for finding these numbers. But he made a very serious mistake in drawing up the algorithm, and Ada immediately discovered it. She independently wrote a program to calculate Bernoulli numbers.
This program is of exceptional interest, since the size, complexity and mathematical formulation of this problem cannot be compared with elementary examples. This example allowed Lovelace to fully demonstrate the programming technique on the Analytical Engine and the advantages that the latter provides when suitable method calculations.
Anticipating the “stages” of computer programming, Ada Lovelace, just like modern mathematicians, begins by posing a problem, then chooses a calculation method convenient for programming, and only then proceeds to compiling a program.
The program caused Babbage a real delight; he did not spare words of praise for its author, and they were absolutely deserved. Support and kind words strengthened Ada's confidence and gave her strength to work. Success was given to her with great stress and undermined her health, which she repeatedly complains about in letters to Babbage. Lovelace wanted this and subsequent works that she dreamed of to be somehow associated with her name. So Ada decides to put her initials under each note.
Lovelace's "Notes" laid the foundations for modern programming, based on the ideas and principles that were expressed by her. One of the most important concepts in programming is the concept of a loop. Lovelace fully understood the importance of the cycle - the use of cyclic computational methods is one of the simplest and the most effective methods, facilitating the use of computers. Therefore, she pays quite a lot of attention to cycles in her work. Lovelace is the author of the definition of a cycle: “A cycle of operations is to be understood as any group of operations that is repeated more than once.” Organizing loops in a program significantly reduces its size. Without such a reduction practical use An analytical engine would be impossible, because it worked with punched cards, and a huge number of them would be required for each problem being solved.
Surprisingly, even at that time Ada Lovelace was fully aware of the colossal “breadth of the spectrum” of the capabilities of a universal computer. At the same time, she very clearly understood the limits of these possibilities: “It is advisable to warn against exaggerating the capabilities of the Analytical Engine, because it does not pretend to create something truly new. The machine can do everything that we can prescribe for it. It can "follow analysis, but it is not able to predict any analytical relationships or truths. The functions of the machine are precisely to help us obtain what we are already familiar with." In 1843, when these points were made, Ada, of course, could not foresee how programming would develop and what forms it would take 120 years later.
Later years
In its first and, unfortunately, only scientific work Ada Lovelace reviewed big number issues that are also relevant for modern programming.After a while, Babbage, together with the Lovelace spouses, began to develop and practically test a system of win-win bets on races. Scientists hoped in this way to obtain financial resources to continue work on computers.
Unfortunately, the “System” did not live up to expectations and, having lost a rather serious amount, Babbage and Count Lovelace refused to participate in improving the “system.” Everyone refused, except for Lady Ada, a gambling and stubborn woman who continued to play. She found herself deeply drawn into this risky game, spending all her personal funds on it, and her husband did not even suspect it. To make matters worse, Lady Ada was in the hands of a group of scammers who were blackmailing her.
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 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, highly appreciating her mental abilities, he lamented: “What an excellent general you could become!” The Lovelace couple led a social lifestyle, regularly hosting receptions and evenings at their London home and the Oakhut Park country estate. Ada's marriage did not alienate her from Babbage; their relationship became even more cordial. At the beginning of their acquaintance, Babbage was attracted math skills girls. Subsequently, Babbage found in her a person who supported all his bold endeavors. Ada was almost the same age as his daughter who died early. 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 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 beneath the 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. Augusta Ada Lovelace accomplished little in her short life. 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 named after Ada Lovelace. small towns- in the states of Alabama and Oklahoma. There is also a college named after her in Oklahoma.
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