Ada Augusta King

Ada Augusta King

Augusta Ada Byron was born on December 10, 1815 in London, England to the poet George Gordon Noel Byron and w3ife Anna Isabella Milbanke. Ada was the only legitimate child of her parents. It was rumored that Ada’s father Lord Byron fathered a child by his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, whom Ada was named after. Several months after Ada’s birth her mother took her and left her father, filed for separation and left England for good. Ada’s father never saw her again. It was years later before Ada would have any contact with her sister, Medora Leigh, the daughter of Byron’s half-sister Augusta Leigh. Ada and Medora were told by Ada’s mother that Byron was Medora’s father.

Ada’s mother taught her music and mathemathics at an early age and home schooled her as well. Ada also received tutoring in mathemathics and science from William Frend, William king, and Mary Somervilleand Augusta De Morgan.

In 1932, Mary Somerville, noted researcher and scientific auther of the 19th century introduced Ada to Charles Babbage and later to her husband. Ada began studying and documenting on Babbage calculating machine, the Analytical Engine. She published the first in-depth paper on programming a computer.

In 1935, at the age of 19 Ada married William King, later becoming the first Earl of Lovelace, in which she gained the title the Countess of Lovelace. The couple had three children, sons Byron Noel, Ralph Gordon, and daughter Anne Isabella.

Ada became an expert on Babbage’s work by observing his design and asking him questions. In 1842, Luigi Federico Manabrea, an Itilian mathematician at the University of Turin, published a paper describing the function and theory of Babbage’s Analtical Engine,