Ada Lovelace was not the first computer programmer

I have received a response to my argument about Ada Lovelace being the “The most overrated figure in the history of computing” (first video result for Google searches of “ada lovelace” – booh yeah!"). This blog post is a counter-response.

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A lot of your argument seems to revolve around making the case that Ada Lovelace (also known as Augusta Ada King) was a talented and intelligent woman. I agree on this, especially when you consider the limitations of her time.

However, none of this matters. All that matters is whether the massive accreditation that is given to her as the “first programmer” is true, and I contend that it is not. Your argument was essentially one of admiration, an admiration that a woman in a society that did not offer women the opportunities that ours does. I understand the sentiment but such emotion can also cloud one’s own judgement. When people become emotionally invested in an idea then they lose objectivity on it. Ada has been described as a “prophet” [1]. You can buy T-shirts entitled “Heroine: Ada Lovelace” [2]. One does not have to search very far to find articles describing with glee that the first programmer was a woman [3][4][5]. Frankly, I feel that the promotion of Ada Lovelace has more to do with political correctness that objective fact.

Some of the descriptions of Ada pass from “creative” to “egregious” take for example the following paragraph:

Computers have had a massive influence our lives over the last 60 years, but they were actually first invented nearly 200 years ago. And one of the pioneers was a female mathematician called Ada Lovelace, who created one of the first computer programs and understood something of the enormous potential of computers.

[6] http://plus.maths.org/issue34/features/ada/index.html

Ada Lovelace was in no way a pioneer. She made no great contributions to mathematics that I know of, her noteworthy accomplishment was a translation of a paper by Menabrea which included a program that she did not wrote, she did not participate in any way to the design of Charles Babbage’s computational machines and I would be sceptical as to whether Charles Babbage himself could be described as a pioneer. Charles Darwin was ahead of his time and his story is a heartbreaking tale of ambition against the mechanical limitations of the time. Babbage didn’t complete either of his machines (prototypes of the analytical engine exist), and it wasn’t until the twentieth century until the techniques of the time could create computers as we know them. We can admire Babbage’s achievements but he didn’t kick-start a revolution.

The main piece of evidence behind the “prophet” claim is her writings that computers may be used for things such as composing music and graphics in the future. This is indeed prescient and impressive when compared to Babbage’s own small minded vision of his machines being used for mathematics only. Ada Lovelace provided encouragement to Babbage and realised the potential of his machines right away, but what of the main claim?

Lord Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada Byron, (Countess of Lovelace) was Charles Babbage's collaborator on the 'difference engine'. She wrote the first computer program to calculate Bernoulli numbers. The programming language ADA is named for her. She was a longtime collaborator after 1833.

[7] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_collaborated_with_Ch...

Charles Babbage wrote the program for her.

In a series of letters between 1842 and 1843, the pair collaborated on seven notes, the combined length of which was three times longer than the actual paper. In one note Ada prepared a table of execution for a program that Babbage wrote to calculate the Bernoulli numbers. In another, she wrote about a generalized algebra engine that could perform operations on symbols as well as numbers. Lovelace was perhaps the first to grasp the more general goals of Babbage’s machine, and some consider her the world's first computer programmer.

[8] http://www.charlesbabbage.net/

Also.

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea's memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

Let’s all grow up for one minute. Are we to believe that Babbage, who had conceived of the difference engine years before Ada got involved, had not written programs for it? That doesn’t pass the smell test.

In researching this piece, I found a brilliant video of Doron Swade. For those not turned on by the subject matter, fast-forward to 36:25 to see a brilliant summary of Ada Lovelace that I agree with completely.

The Ada Lovelace affair is a case of facts not mattering in the face of an agenda. If you care about the truth, then you should correct those who misrepresent history for their personal emotional gains.

 

Sources

[1] http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Ada_and_the_First_Computer.pdf. pp81

[2] http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/itdepartment/e390/

[3] http://inventors.suite101.com/article.cfm/who_invented_the_worlds_first_computer_program

[4] http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/03/ada-lovelace-day/

[5] http://hubpages.com/hub/Historiography-of-Ada-Augusta-Lovelace

[6] http://plus.maths.org/issue34/features/ada/index.html

[7] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_collaborated_with_Charles_Babbage_and_wrote_the_first_computer_program

[8] http://www.charlesbabbage.net/

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

Posted under: Gender Issues, Skepticism, Feedback, Political Correctness
Posted on: Thursday, July 08, 2010 1:57 AM
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Comments

  1. Posted by: Jay R on 7/8/2010 7:50 AM
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    It is kind of sad and pathetic, really, that women have to be constantly celebrated for accomplishments which, if attributed to men, would be not be considered particularly noteworthy. Think of the "Special" Olympics. Feminism "empowers" women by infantilizing them.
  2. Posted by: Mark on 7/8/2010 4:08 PM
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    I agree Jay. Someone who is confident in her abilities doesn't need Ada Lovelace to be the first programmer. People who attach their own self worth to their group are those who lack self esteem.
  3. Posted by: goLookGoRead on 7/11/2010 9:41 PM
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    Mark, thank you for your feedback on 'My Take on Ada' blog entry. I thoroughly enjoyed Doron Swade’s lecture. I listened to it twice and transcribed the direct quotes that he read out.

    I understand the sentiment but such emotion can also cloud one’s own judgement. When people become emotionally invested in an idea then they lose objectivity on it.


    Emotion, to me, is my starting point; it is also an important element of the way I communicate.

    When you communicate with me and you use the word ‘objectivity’, this very word holds a set of perhaps different values to me (no rights and no wrongs implied). Surely the source of all social issues originates from the emotional investment each individual puts into their own idea.

    Some of the descriptions of Ada pass from “creative” to “egregious”


    – yes, I agree, she is often misrepresented to extremes – it was quite hard for me find material that I could personally and genuinely trust about Ada’s studies or work with Babbage, a lot of what I have read seemed to me rather superficial.

    I would be sceptical as to whether Charles Babbage himself could be described as a pioneer. Charles Darwin was ahead of his time and his story is a heartbreaking tale of ambition against the mechanical limitations of the time.


    You can’t compare apples and pairs – Ada cannot be compared to Babbage, and neither can Babbage be compared to Darwin. However, they both received similar medals from the Royal Society, so I have to accept that they were equally popular with their contemporary peers. We have the benefit of hindsight, and we therefore can make quality judgements about whose ideas have better withstood the test of time.

    The main piece of evidence behind the “prophet” claim is her writings that computers may be used for things such as composing music and graphics in the future. This is indeed prescient and impressive when compared to Babbage’s own small minded vision of his machines being used for mathematics only. Ada Lovelace provided encouragement to Babbage and realised the potential of his machines right away, but what of the main claim?


    If I can get hold of Menebrea’s (entire) article in Italian, I’ll be able to ascertain if perhaps she wasn’t so much ‘making a claim’ but translating Mossotti and Plana’s discussions on the Analytical Engine.

    Let’s all grow up for one minute. Are we to believe that Babbage, who had conceived of the difference engine years before Ada got involved, had not written programs for it? That doesn’t pass the smell test.


    I still would like to give Ada the benefit of the doubt – it is conceivable to me that Babbage supplied her with all his algorithms and that she devised the notation used to program the actual machine. It would have all had to have been rather theoretical, because no working prototype had ever existed.

    facts not mattering in the face of an agenda


    The government and eSkillsUK are trying to encourage more girls to study computer science and for more women to enter more IT professions. Which is ridiculous, because employers would rather hire IT talent from abroad, or use the outsourcing option, than to actually hire UK citizens to then invest in people’s training or re-training.

    Like most information campaigns sponsored by government quangos, it is a shallow but pragmatic exercise in meaningless political correctness. This is the question that I ask myself: How can a modern girl today, who would like to work in the computer industry, identify with a privately tutored aristocrat who about 150 years ago, only really existed in her own living rooms?

    If you care about the truth, then you should correct those who misrepresent history for their personal emotional gains.


    I also think that truth is just about anything anybody else wants it to be. ‘Truth’ is a word that is available to me in sea of many other words.

    Emotions can gain me (or loose me) important insights into a new or an old idea, whereas objectivity is like a method for trying to explain things to others. I do not think that either the male or the female brain is capable of being ‘trully’ objective. I happen to believe that every human being is just as emotional as the other, which I don’t mind most of the time, because it makes for interesting people. Objectivity to me is like a kind of beaurocracy that exists to serve a different representative purpose.

    I am just amazed at how much the Internet now contains - I wouldn't be surprised if in not too long we will be able to read everybody's 'memoirs' and 'letters' on anything and everybody! However, I couldn't find much about Ada in Ada's own words.
  4. Posted by: Mark on 7/13/2010 12:59 PM
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    Thanks for the reply. I am mad busy at the moment and it will probably take me until Thursday to reply.

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