"Ada: Enchantress of numbers"           E-mail:  adatoole@well.sf.ca.us


September 1993 is the 150th anniversary of Ada Byron's, (Lady 
Lovelace's), description of Charles Babbage's concept of the first 
computer, the  "Analytical Engine".

Ada was remarkable for being one of the most picturesque characters 
in the history of computing as well as the most prescient about the 
computer revolution.  As Howard Rheingold wrote in his review in 
Whole Earth: "Her letters are some of the classic founding 
documents of . . .computer science written a century before ENIAC. "

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling used Ada in their science fiction 
novel, "The Difference Engine" as the "queen of the engines."  Ada's 
story and her letters are a hologram, a journey through cyberspace.  
Her vision of the Analytical Engine has stood the test of time: she 
predicted its use for sound, vision, as well as its use as a practical and 
scientific machine.

Speaking of the programming system she develped for the 
mechanical computer,  Ada teased in a letter to Babbage:

"No one knows what power lies yet undevelopped in that wiry 
system of mine."
 
All the excerpts that follow are from "Ada, The Enchantress of 
Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and 
Her Description of the First Computer" by Betty A. Toole Ed.D. 
published by Strawberry Press, Mill Valley, California 

From Part 10 -
Working Like the Devil
A Fairy in Your Service
What a General I Would Make
An Analyst and a Metaphysician
(All from 1843)

Ada gave Wheatstone, who was working with Richard Taylor, the 
publisher of a scientific journal, her translation of L. F. Menabrea's 
description of Babbage's Analytical Engine, which was published in French in 
a Swiss Journal in October, 1842.  According to Babbage's recollection in his 
autobiography, Passages, many years after Ada's death, he wrote: "Some time 
after the appearance of his memoir [article] on the subject in the 
"Bibliothque Universelle de Gnve," the Countess of Lovelace informed 
me that she had translated the memoir of Menabrea.  I asked why she had not 
herself written an original paper on the subject with which she was so 
intimately acquainted? To this Lady Lovelace replied that the thought had not 
occurred to her.  I then suggested that she should add notes to Menabrea's 
memoir: an idea which was immediately adopted.". . .

1. To Charles Babbage
Thursday Morning [1843]                                             Ockham
My Dear Babbage.  I have read your papers over with great attention; but I 
want you to answer me the following question by return of post.  The day I 
called on you, you wrote off on a scrap of paper (which I have unluckily lost), 
that the Difference Engine would do. . . Analytical Engine would do . .  . 
(something else which is absolutely general).  
Be kind enough to write this out properly for me; & then I think I can make 
some very good Notes. . .                       A.A.L. 


Ada started making headway with the Notes and sent some off for 
Babbage's inspection.  As for her Note A, Babbage replied the next day: "If you 
are as fastidious about the acts of your friendship as you are about those of 
your pen, I much fear I shall equally lose your friendship and your Notes.  I 
am very reluctant to return your admirable & philosophic Note A.  Pray do 
not alter it . . .  All this was impossible for you to know by intuition and
the 
more I read your notes the more surprised I am at them and regret not 
having earlier explored so rich a vein of the noblest metal."1
Babbage continued his compliments and wrote her that Note D was in her 
usual "clear style." . . .


2. To Charles Babbage                                                   
Monday [10 July 1843]1                                                                      
Ockham
My Dear Babbage.  I am working very hard for you; like the Devil in fact; 
(which perhaps I am).
I think you will be pleased.  I have made what appear to me some very 
important extensions & improvements.   . . .It appears to me that I am 
working up the Notes with much success; & that even if the book be delayed 
in it's [sic] publication, a week or two, in consequence, it would be worth Mr 
Taylor's while to wait.  I will have it well & fully done; or not at all. 
I want to put in something about Bernoulli's Numbers, in one of my 
Notes, as an example of how an implicit function, may be worked out by the 
engine, without having been worked out by human head & hands first.  Give 
me the necessary data & formulae.  Yours ever                           A.A.L.

6. To Charles Babbage
Tuesday Morning [4 July 1843]                                   Ockham
My Dear Babbage.   . . 

In Note D, it is very well & lucidly demonstrated that every single 
Operation, demands the use of at least three Variable-Cards.  It does not 
signify whether the operations be in cycles or not.  . . .I enclose what I
believe it ought to be. . . 

        Think of my having to walk, (or rather run), to the Station, in half an 
hour last evening; while I suppose you were feasting & flirting in luxury & 
ease at your dinner.  It must be a very pleasant merry sort of thing to have a 
Fairy in one's service, mind & limbs!   I envy you!   I, poor little Fairy, can 
only get dull heavy mortals, to wait on me!   Ever Yours                                                                A.L.    



8. To Charles Babbage
Wednesday, 5 July [1843]                                                        Ockham Park
My Dear Babbage.  I am much obliged by the contents of your letter, in all 
respects.  . .,
"Why does my friend prefer imaginary roots for our friendship?"   Just 
because she happens to have some of that very imagination which you would 
deny her to possess; & therefore she enjoys a little play & scope for it now & 
then.  Besides this, I deny the Fairyism to be entirely imaginary; (& it is to
the fairy similes that I suppose you allude).

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will 
show; (if only my breathing & some other et-ceteras do not make too rapid a 
progress towards instead of from mortality). 

Before ten years are over, the Devil's in it if I have not sucked out some of 
the life-blood from the mysteries of this universe, in a way that no purely 
mortal lips or brains could do.

No one knows what almost awful energy & power lie yet undevelopped 
in that wiry little system of mine.  I say awful, because you may imagine what 
it might be under certain circumstances.

Lord L,  sometimes says "what a General1 you would make!"  Fancy me 
in times of social & political trouble, (had worldly power, rule, & ambition 
been my line, which now it never could be).

A desperate spirit truly; & with a degree of deep & fathomless prudence, 
which is strangely at variance with the daring & the enterprise of the 
character, a union that would give me unlimited sway & success, in all 
probability.

My kingdom however is not to be a temporal one, thank Heaven! . . .
"Labor ipse voluptas"2 is in very deed my motto!  And, (as I hinted just 
now), it is perhaps well for the world that my line & ambition is over the 
spiritual; & that I have not taken it into my head, or lived in times & 
circumstances calculated to put it into my head, to deal with the sword, 
poison, & intrigue, in the place of x, y, & z.  . .

Your Fairy for ever                                                             
        A.A.L. . .
1 Ada's humorous reference to a General is prescient. The software language
"Ada" was named 
in her honour.  It was developed and is used as a standard by the U.S.
Department of Defense.  
2 "Labour is its own reward," was the Lovelace family motto.
3 Ohm was a German physicist (1787-1854).  Ohm's law states that for any
circuit the electric 
current is directly proportional to the voltage and inversely proportional to
the resistance.

22. To Charles Babbage
Sunday, 30 July [1843]                                                       Ockham
I am beyond measure vexed to find that instead of inserting my corrected 
Table in the Revise . . . they have left it exactly as it was before.  Pray see
about it immediately.  It is exceedingly careless & annoying. . . 

I do not think you possess half my forethought, & power of foreseeing all 
possible contingencies (probable & improbable, just alike).  . . ..
How very careless of you to forget that Note; & how much waiting on & 
service you owe me, to compensate.

I am in good spirits; for I hope another year will make me really 
something of an Analyst.  The more I study, the more irresistible do I feel my 
genius for it to be.

        I do not believe that my father was (or ever could have been) such a Poet as I
shall be an Analyst; (& Metaphysician); for with me the two go together
indissolubly.   Yours                                                                   A.L.


From Ada's description of the first computer found in part 12 of "Ada, The 
Enchantress of Numbers":

Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in
the 
science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such
expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific
pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.  

We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns
just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that
might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine.  In considering any new
subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be
already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural
reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that
our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable. The Analytical
Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing.  It can do whatever
we know how to order it to perform.



In part 11, towards the end of Ada writing this description, she and Babbage 
quarrelled.  The reason is found in a letter on the inside of the bookcover of 
"Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers."  After the publication of the Notes, the 
arguments were resolved and Ada invited Babbage to Ashley Combe, her 
home in Somerset.

Babbage's reply to Ada's invitation was:
9 September 1843
My Dear Lady Lovelace.  I find it quite in vain to wait until I have leisure so
I have resolved that I will leave all other things undone and set out for
Ashley taking with me papers enough to enable me to forget this world and all
its' troubles and if possible its' multitudinous Charlatans  every thing in
short but the Enchantress of Numbers. . .

        Farewell my dear and much admired Interpretess.
                                Evermost Truly Yours
                                C Babbage


The rest of her short life Ada was ill.  She spent a great deal of time under
the influence of laudanum, in cyberspace.  She saw the need for nanotechnology:
"What we need is a Newton of the molecular universe," and orbiting in
cyberspace Ada saw planetary visions, and her eerie prediction of her personal
destiny.  The current review of "Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers," just out in
the "Annals of the History of Computing" rate the book as "excellent and
thoughtful" and for the reader it is a source book not only of the birth of the
computer revolution, but for the imagination.


Ada The Enchantress of Numbers is published by Strawberry Press.  It is a 
452 page hardback with over 80 illustrations, and can be obtained for 
$29.95 prepaid post paid ($42 to ship air outside U.S.) from:

Critical Connection
P.O. Box 452
Sausalito, Ca 94966.

Credit cards call 1-800-544-4565.

In the U.K. distributed by Computer Bookshops, Birmingham to bookstores 
and Pickering and Chatto, to libraries.

The author can be reached via Internet e-mail at:

                adatoole@well.sf.us.ca