As this year is the bicentenary of Ada Lovelace's birth, I thought it appropriate to read this book. It's a biography of Ada, and highlights the astonishing grasp of the concept of computer programming before computers had been invented. In a nutshell, Charles Babbage saw his Analytical Engine as an automated calculator that would be able to work with fractions (in effect), but didn't really get beyond that. Lovelace, on the other hand, reasoned that if a machine could manipulate numbers, then it would be able to manipulate other kinds of symbols too. She even suggested that music could be encoded by the machine.
Ada's Algorithm, by James Essinger, goes into minute detail, not just of Ada's life but of her parents' lives before she was born. It is, as it happens, relevant, but I did find the detail somewhat irritating. I read it on a Kindle, and it was not until I reached the 48% mark that the author started to address Ada's appreciation of what Babbage's machine might be programmed to do.
While the amount of detail earlier in the book is, I feel, an obstacle to enjoyment, the detail once we get on to Ada's relationship with the Analytical Engine is absolutely riveting.
Reading the almost line by line account of Ada's notes on the article she translated (her notes were longer than the article itself), I could really appreciate the description often applied to Ada Lovelace, that of being the world's first computer programmer.
Three thoughts struck me while reading the book:
First, a sense of outrage that in her day women were thought to be too fragile, both physically and mentally, to study maths and science. I know that we're supposed to take into account the fact or the possibility that people in those days weren't as enlightened as we are now, but I think that's a load of hogwash quite frankly. There are pompous, misogynistic and ignorant people in any age. The scandal is that 200 years ago that was thought to be acceptable.
Second, I've read several books about the development of programming or its variations, such as about the Enigma machine at Bletchley Park, and Ada Lovelace is often either not mentioned at all or just mentioned in a footnote. It makes me feel – and I realise that this sounds ridiculous but I'll say it anyway – it makes me feel angry on her behalf.
Third, it really is a jaw-dropping thought that we might have developed the computer more than a century before we did, had Babbage allowed Lovelace to take over the PR and management associated with the Analytical machine. Mind you, I am not sure that is a realistic idea, because in those days each part had to be made by hand, and there were thousands of them. Perhaps, though, computing as a practical science might have been established long before it eventually was.
This is definitely a book worth buying, even if you decide to skip almost the first half of the book.
Star rating: 3/5
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This review was first published in the Digital Education newsletter.
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