Ada Lovelace: 'The Enchantress of Numbers'


Ada Lovelace (Mrs. Ada King) is honored by Google as a doodle on her 197th birthday.







"Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible
 its multitudinous Charlatans-- everything in short but
 the Enchantress of Numbers."

--Charles Babbage to Ada Lovelace

Ada was married to William King and had three children by him – two years after she first met Babbage. But Babbage and Ada continued to correspond. In 1842, Babbage turned to Ada when he needed someone to translate the work of mathematician Louis Menebrea, who published an article in French about Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Ada spent nine months translating it, and appending elaborate notes about the Analytical Engine to the article that were longer than the article itself. It was this set of notes that have earned Ada her place in the history of computing.

Her notes included a detailed description – a computer algorithm – of how to calculate a sequence of Bernouli numbers, using the Analytical Engine. The Engine, run by punch cards, became the basis for the design for the modern computer. But Babbage's Engine was never built in his lifetime.

Some historians have disputed Ada's contribution. That she was merely a student taking dictation, and occasionally catching Babbage's errors.

But her notes show that she saw something that Babbage didn't: the potential of the 'Engine,' what we would one day call a "computer" to change all facets of human life, including music.


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