Iqra Abbasi
Figure 1: Ada Lovelace, https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/ada-lovelace-day-2/
The official computer languages pioneered in the 1950s with the creation of Fortran I, Cobol and Algol (Fairhead) were thought to be milestones in understanding the personal computer, more specifically the operational principle of a Central Processing Unit with memory. However, while many pay homage to Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, the first ‘programmer’ generally agreed upon is Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52).
Ada Lovelace was born to Rmantic poet Lord Byron and his wife, Annabelle. They separated when Ada was five months old, and as a result, her mother kept Ada busy at a young age with various tutors in mathematics, sciences, music and French (Charman-Anderson). Ada’s life took a turn when at 17 she was introduced to Charles Babbage, a professor in mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Babbage invited Ada to come to see his small-scale computing machine called the Difference Engine, commonly referred to as the Difference Machine. Ada, determined to understand how the machine worked, asked Babbage to look at the blueprints of the machine.
Figure 2: Jacquard Loom showing punched cards and threads, sourced http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt2.htm
To begin her study into understanding the Difference Machine, she went to study the Jacquard Loom in operation. The machine produced textiles with patterns woven into them and was invented in 1801 by Joseph Marie Jacquard. The machine was controlled by punch cards, with one card equal to one row of textile. If the card were punched, the loom is raised and if it wasn’t then the loom was left alone. The punch issued instructions to the machine and therefore was a simple machine code (Charman-Anderson).
When Babbage gave up on the Difference machine and focused his effort on the Analytical Machine instead, it seemed reasonable. The Analytical machine had all the elements of a modern computer such as speed, accuracy and large storage capacity and like the Jacquard loom, it could also be used to do complex arithmetic using punch cards.
Ada’s chance to shine came when she translated a paper on the Analytical Machine by Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea. Since Ada’s knowledge and understanding of the machine were more thorough than Menabrea’s, she corrected any errors. When she showed her translation to Babbage, he asked her to expand on the translation as she had more understanding. Her expansion of the paper included footnotes for computer programs such as one to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Her intention was not to show what the numbers were but how the machine could be coded to calculate them (Morias).
Creation of Note G
Ada’s simple code Node G described how to break down algebra into simple formulae that the analytical machine could process. These formulae included addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It also then described how to code these formulae for the Analytical machine (Menabrea).
Figure 3: Note G © Magdalen College Libraries and Archives, Daubeny 90.A.1. https://epsrc.ukri.org/blog/ada-lovelace-a-scientist-in-the-archives/1
Ada Lovelace Contribution and Future
Naming the computer language “Ada” in her memory recognized Ada’s contribution in designing code for the Analytical machine. Her most significant contribution aside from creating the code was her understanding that it was the software and abstract expression of algorithms that made the machine powerful enough to do calculations. The takeaway from her research on the Analytical machine and one that is understood today in the field of computer programming is that programming and programming languages have a separate life from the hardware used to implement them (Fairhead, 2017). Without software to utilize, they are useless pieces of code without purpose or meaning but once incorporated into a system on a computer, it will do its job. A program is a list of instructions, on its own, it is unable to do anything but once incorporated into a computer, the computer will follow that list. The machine that obeys the instructions isn’t that entire complex but how the code is written and the language used is. That is where the magic lies in computer programming for you can design a simple code or you can design a complex one. Ada Lovelace legacy lives on through the Ada programming language and many initiatives for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathemathics (STEM). She defied the limitations of women in her time and became one of the most well known figures in the computer software history.
Works Cited
Charman-Anderson, Suw. “Ada Lovelace: Victorian Computing Visionary.” Ada Lovelace Day, findingada.com/shop/a-passion-for-science-stories-of-discovery-and-invention/ada-lovelace-victorian-computing-visionary/.
Fairhead, Harry. “History of Computer Languages – The Classical Decade, 1950s.” I Programmer, 16 Nov. 2017, www.i-programmer.info/history/computer-languages/471-the-classical-decade.html.
Menabrea, L F. “Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage.” Bibliothèque Universelle De Genève, 1842.
Morais, Betsy. “Ada Lovelace, the First Tech Visionary.” The New Yorker,19 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/ada-lovelace-the-first-tech-visionary.