Ada Lovelace Cracks the Code

by Rebel Girls

“Think, Ada,” Miss Stamp encouraged as she helped her up. “You’ve seen birds fly. What do they have that you don’t?”

  Ada pictured the gulls she saw gliding over Lake Geneva and the thrushes that landed on her windowsill in the springtime. They pushed the air away from their bodies as they rose, then their feathers caught the wind like sails to soar.

  “Of course!” Ada exclaimed with a laugh. “Wings!”

  Dear Mama,

  I think I’ll make wings out of silk. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try feathers. I am going to take the exact pattern of a bird’s wing and then make a human-size pair. And if I fail, I have a back-up plan. Two of them, actually.

  Your affectionate carrier pigeon,

  AA Byron

  My Dear Mama,

  My wings are coming along nicely. Once I have figured out how to fly, I have a new idea. I’m going to build a mechanical horse with a steam engine inside. It will have giant wings big enough to carry it in the air, while a person (preferably me) rides on its back. There are still some equations to work out, but I think I can do it. The weather has been terrible. I have not been feeling well lately.

  Your pigeon,

  AA Byron

  Ada sat on the floor of the flying room with paper, silk, and pages of measurements spread out around her. The wings had felt heavier than usual against her back that morning. She’d been sick all week with a fever she couldn’t shake. At Miss Stamp’s request she had stayed in bed the day before, but she was eager to finish her invention before her mama came home.

  A shadow darkened the doorway.

  “Ada! What is this?” Annabella asked.

  “Mama!” Ada struggled to her feet. “You’re home! Come, let me show you my wings.”

  “Wings? Flying? Ada, your letters hardly made sense. What’s happened to your lessons?”

  “Don’t you see, Mama? I’ve almost got it worked out. If I can just figure out the right angle to attach the wings—”

  “You will do no such thing. You have spent more than enough time on this flying nonsense.”

  “It is not nonsense! It’s a brilliant idea. Just ask Miss Stamp, we’ve been working together—”

  “You won’t be any longer!” her mother snapped. Her voice was a tiny bit softer as she began again: “I have just spoken to Miss Stamp, Ada. She is engaged to be married. She will be leaving us soon.”

  Ada’s knees felt weak. The walls seemed to spin around her and an unpleasant sweat broke out on her skin.

  “Ada?”

  I’ve never seen Mama look so frightened, Ada thought.

  Then she fell to the floor and thought nothing else.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Burning. The feeling of fire dancing on her skin. Somewhere a window was open, but the pain of the light was too much to bear. Ada turned away from it.

  “We should bleed her,” a voice drifted in from the hallway.

  “You will do no such thing,” said another.

  They could not be speaking about her. She had no blood. She had no body. She was a bird flying over the rooftops, too high to be reached by sound or pain.

  Slowly, an awareness came back to Ada’s body and mind. She wriggled her fingers and toes and a face swam into view. It was a beautiful face, full of love.

  “Mama,” she whispered.

  “Hush, my darling,” her mother murmured, and placed her hand against her cheek.

  Ada turned her head toward the cool palm and slept.

  ~

  One misty day, a nurse pushed Ada in her wheelchair along the southern bank of the River Thames. Ada shivered under the wool blankets tucked around her.

  “Do you want to go inside, miss?” the nurse asked.

  “No, thank you,” Ada replied quickly. “I’d much rather be outdoors.”

  It had been two years since Ada collapsed. She was now fifteen years old. There were no more flying experiments, and her laboratory in the barn had been dismantled. Ada and her mother had moved closer to the hospital in London. They lived in a house called the Limes, which made Ada dream of fruit trees blooming under a blue summer sky.

  The London sky looked as dull and smudgy as pencil scribbles, and the north side of the river was tangled with weeds and leafless branches. Ada pulled the shawl around her more tightly and watched a lone steamer boat chop across the water.

  Ada had come down with a terrible case of the measles, her mother explained later. She’d been semi-blind and unable to move her arms or legs. When the illness faded, her doctors insisted she remain in bed as her body healed.

  Ada winced as the wooden wheelchair bumped over a crack in the paving stones. The old Ada would have been furious at her life now. This new version of herself had no strength to argue. Still, she would never miss a chance to see the sky. She closed her eyes and turned her face upward as a drizzling rain began to fall.

  ~

  Later Ada would look back and marvel at how quickly her health fell apart and how long it took to put it back together. But heal she did, little by little. The first time she walked without help, she felt triumphant. The first time she was able to mount a horse and ride across the yard, she nearly cried with happiness.

  She sometimes thought fondly of her flying experiments with Miss Stamp. But she did not long for them as she had in the first days of her illness. At seventeen, Ada’s studies now felt like important work, not a schoolgirl’s games. She knew now that time was precious.

  A man tapped on her forehead, bringing her back to the present moment.

  “Hmmm. The bone here indicates a great deal of intelligence. But here,” he continued, pressing gently above her ears. “Here, it is of a particularly stubborn and willful kind.”

  “I could have told you that and saved us the trouble,” Ada muttered under her breath.

  “Ada, hush,” Annabella hissed.

  The man seemed sure of himself as he looked at Ada. “Miss Byron, phrenology cannot be rushed. Thanks to the great men of science, we now understand that one’s personality can be understood simply from the shape of the skull.”

  Ada tried not to roll her eyes.

  When he left, Ada glared at her mother. “Finally, I am well enough to do whatever I wish, and you’re wasting my time with this nonsense!”

  “Phrenology is not nonsense, Ada. It’s science.”

  “The power of steam is science. The curve and color of a rainbow is science. This fool tapping my skull is just silly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do,” Ada said, exasperated.

  “You are not excused. And you may not speak to me that way. I am your mother!”

  “I’m not a child!”

  “You are not an adult yet. You need to understand more of what the world is like before stepping out into it. To that end, you will be going on a trip next week.”

  Ada perked up, imagining mountains and museums and a relaxing vacation from her mother’s piercing gaze.

  “Where am I going?”

  “Northern England.”

  Annabella did not elaborate, but instead fixed Ada with a look that said the journey was not up for discussion.

  “With me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  To Ada, the trip to Northern England felt endless. She and her mother sweated through a tour of the blazing hot kilns at a pottery factory. Then they visited a ribbon company and listened to an explanation of silk-making that went on for so long Ada’s eyelids started to droop. A jab in the ribs from Annabella’s spear-sharp elbow woke her right up.

  They finally came to a fabric factory.

  “How much cloth do you produce each year?” Annabella asked the manager. She leaned in closer to hear his reply over the noise of the machinery.

  Ada had absolutely no interest in the amount of fabric produced here or anywhere else, but tried to look engaged as she followed them into a dim hallway.

  They walked by a room of men who sat at wooden desks, with piles upon piles of paper beside them, waiting for processing. Ada heard some of the
m murmur to themselves as they counted aloud.

  “What are they doing?” Ada asked, glad to be away from the banging, clanging machines.

  “Computing this year’s profits,” said the floor manager. He quickly shut the door. “Wouldn’t want to disturb their calculations. Distracted computers make more mistakes!”

  Ada looked through another door where workers punched holes into large cards. “And what do those pieces of paper do?”

  “The holes in the cards give the machines directions. Come along, now. I’ll show you how it all works.”

  Ada and her mother followed the manager into the mill. Workers stooped over long wooden frames laced with threads that twisted until cloth formed below. Ada knew these machines were looms.

  “If you come this way, Lady Byron and Miss Byron,” the manager continued, “you’ll see our newest addition: a Jacquard loom.”

  Even if Ada had sat on her mother’s shoulders, the wooden loom would have towered above them. Lengths of thread ran across the machine from two different directions: one like a waterfall and the other like a river.

  Operators fed a long stretch of punched cards into the machine from the top. On the older looms, weavers were moving the threads by hand to make fabric. But with the Jacquard loom, the holes in the cards told the machine what patterns to weave.

  “The cards give the machine instructions, and it does the rest on its own?” Ada asked.

  “Exactly! It used to take two people an entire day just to weave a centimeter of fabric. But by feeding punch cards into this machine, a single loom can create a meter of cloth in the same amount of time!”

  “That’s brilliant!” Ada exclaimed. She walked around the loom, examining it from every angle. The finished fabrics were works of art, with delicate flowers and birds shimmering against a silken background. This process, as Ada saw it, was science. The whole machine relied on precise calculations to determine the relationship between the card, the threads, and the machine. It was as if her mathematical exercises were coming to life, turning mechanics into magic.

  As they left the factory, Ada turned to Annabella and uttered something she couldn’t have imagined saying just hours before: “Thank you, Mama, for bringing me here.”

  ~

  From Northern England, Ada and Annabella took the train to King William and Queen Adelaide’s summer palace. Now that Ada was seventeen, it was time for her to meet the lords and ladies of the royal court. There would be a fancy ceremony and dinner, followed by a ball. Ada was dreading it, but Annabella was delighted to be among her old friends again.

  Alone in her room, Ada looked at her dress of white tulle and satin. She tried to picture the delicate cloth rising from one of the looms in the loud, steaming factory, but she couldn’t.

  She tried to imagine herself wearing the dress. But she couldn’t imagine that either.

  In her mind, Ada ran through the steps she’d practiced night after night under Mama’s watchful eye. First, a slow, dignified walk toward the thrones. Second, a low, graceful curtsey. Third, a quick prayer that she didn’t topple over before it was time to rise.

  It was important to make a good impression before the king and queen, of course. But Ada knew this visit was really about finding a husband. Most girls her age were being matched up. Plenty of men would be interested in the daughter of the famous Lord Byron, not to mention the small fortune she would one day inherit.

  The challenge, Ada thought, will be finding a husband who understands me.

  To her surprise, the evening passed in a happy blur. Ada approached the king and queen, curtsied without so much as a wobble, then danced the night away. Annabella was invited to sit beside the queen at dinner where the two chatted warmly. There were occasional stares from people trying to catch a glimpse of Lady Byron and Ada.

  “That’s that mad poet’s daughter!” one batty-looking lady said to a friend behind her fan. The woman thought she was whispering, but it was loud enough to reach Ada’s ears. But Ada was too busy dancing and laughing to care.

  At the end of the night, Ada and her mother giddily climbed into the carriage, exhausted but excited. They could still hear the music drifting out of the Royal Pavilion as their carriage sped away.

  “Did you enjoy yourself, Ada?”

  “I did! The music was divine. I’d love to try playing the harp. I must say, though, that the party wasn’t as interesting as the mathematics lecture we went to last month.”

  “And did you meet any interesting people this evening?”

  “No,” Ada confessed. “I hardly remember who I spoke to. But I did talk to your friend Mary Somerville, and she invited me over to discuss geometry next week.”

  Ada was surprised to see her mother’s eyes linger on her face, as if it were that of a person she had not seen in some time.

  “Your father used to call me the Princess of Parallelograms.” Annabella’s voice took on a gentle tone that Ada hadn’t heard before.

  “Really? What else did he used to say?”

  Ada’s question snapped Lady Byron out of her memories. “Never you mind,” she replied, with a quick rap on her daughter’s hand. Yet her voice was softer than usual, and her hand rested there for a moment, holding Ada’s.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Awoman with rosy cheeks and kind eyes opened the door to a tall brick house. To Ada’s shock, she wore a bright orange robe wrapped around her dress.

  “Miss Byron!” the lady exclaimed. “Do come in.”

  Ada had been looking forward to this visit with her mother’s old friend, Mary Somerville, for a long time. Mary’s scientific papers and books were some of the most respected in Europe. Since she couldn’t be called a “man of science,” like almost all of England’s top researchers, a reviewer of her last paper invented a new word to describe her: scientist.

  “It’s wonderful that your mother has urged you toward mathematics and the sciences,” Mary said as they sat down to tea. “My own parents feared that the strain of mathematics was too much for the female brain. I had to sneak a small candle under the covers at bedtime and read in secret. They’re lucky I didn’t accidentally burn the house down.” Mary took a sip of tea, her eyes smiling at Ada over the rim of her cup.

  “Mama hopes I will take a husband soon. I must say, I hate the idea. I suppose I’ll have to give up my studies.”

  “But Miss Byron, why do you speak as though your marriage and your studies are two separate things that cannot coexist? I got married. I had two children. And I continued my work. There is no need to choose between a family life and a life of the mind. Those who think there is probably don’t have much of the second.”

  That night, Ada sat down with a book of geometry, the kind of math that focuses on shapes. She traced lines and angles in her notebook. The pages flew by one after the other until daybreak.

  Ada wrote to Mary nearly every day, asking questions about equations in her workbook. The letters that came back gave answers in clear, simple language. Though Mary knew more than Ada, her explanations felt more like listening to a friend than a lecture.

  “Miss Byron, there’s someone I would like you to meet,” Mary said during Ada’s next visit. “A great mathematician and first-rate inventor called Charles Babbage is having a gathering. You must attend as my guest.”

  “Must I, Mrs. Somerville? Parties can be so dull.”

  “Not this one, Miss Byron. I think you’ll find this one most fascinating.”

  ~

  A week later, the carriage pulled up in front of a brick house with brightly lit windows. The sound of countless voices tumbled out onto the street. Unlike the quiet dinners Ada often attended with her mother, this house seemed to crackle with energy.

  “Miss Byron!” Mary called from across the room. Ada squeezed through the crowd to her friend and warmly kissed her cheeks. “Miss Byron, allow me to introduce you to our host this evening, Mr. Charles Babbage.”

  A man in a rumpled coat with messy hair stood before her. “I
t’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Babbage.”

  “Welcome, Miss Byron. Mrs. Somerville tells me you’re interested in mathematics?”

  “I am. She has been so kind as to tutor me in geometry. I cannot yet match her skill, but it’s not for lack of trying. You’re an inventor?”

  Charles directed Ada’s attention to a small glass case, where a mechanical doll balanced a bird on her tiny outstretched fingers. He turned a crank, and the doll bowed from inside her case. “This is the Silver Lady . . . ”

  But Ada’s attention had drifted to an object on a wooden table behind the inventor. Half-obscured by a curtain was a machine unlike any Ada had ever seen: a three-foot high tower of brass tubes, wheels, gears, and cogs.

  “What’s that machine?” Ada leaned to one side to see it more clearly.

  Charles stepped back to give her a better view. “Ah, this is my favorite invention. I call it the Difference Engine. This is only a small section of it. I’ve had some, er, trouble having the whole machine built. But this part should be enough to demonstrate.”

  Charles made some careful adjustments to the wheels in the tower, then grasped the crank on the top of the machine and pushed it back and forth. Metal cogs began to click and turn below.

  “When it’s up and running, the machine will be able to count numbers up to ten thousand and add and multiply large numbers, all without any silly little mistakes that humans make!”

  Ada said nothing, too distracted by the wonder before her eyes. She thought of the human computers in the factory she’d seen, counting money, tracking expenses, and checking each other’s work all day long. With this machine, they could solve math problems with half the time and ink!

  She knelt down to peer at the fine grooves on the wheels. Each was numbered in bold black script. Ada had to fight the urge to pry each gear from the next so she could better understand how the machine worked.

  “Others have tried to build calculating machines, of course,” said Charles. “But no one’s ever made one that didn’t require a person’s help at every step. But my machine is entirely automatic. All you have to do is turn the handle, and the engine does the work.”