Mom and Dad of computers

Last evening I went to the Open Book Theatre, a little theater south of Detroit (in what we call Downriver), to see the play Ada and the Engine by Lauren Gunderson. Any computer geek with any sense of history (and that should be all of them, but, well…) would know the names Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.

We meet Ada at age 18 before she marries Lord William Lovelace. She is the daughter of the poet Lord Byron who abandoned the family, then died at a young age. Ada’s mother Anabella does not want Ada to be reading her father’s poetry. Too much of it is about his wandering from bed to bed. Mom very much wants Ada to wed a man of position.

Ada meets Charles Babbage at a party. His talk of a difference engine, the predecessor of a calculating machine (if it was ever built), captures Ada’s mind. However, he is too old to be a suitable husband (he’s also a widower with kids). Ada finds Lord Lovelace a sufficient husband and grows to love him. He wisely allows her to correspond with Charles and he notes that when Ada and Charles are together in person she lights up, enthused about all the ideas around the engine.

In 1837 Charles extends the idea of a difference engine to an analytical engine. This is the idea of the modern computer. He gives a series of talks about the idea in Italy. I’m not sure how an Englishman giving a talk in Italy ends up with a transcript of his talks that are in French. Charles hands the transcript to Ada and suggests she translate it, add her own context, and prepare it for publication.

Her “context” becomes about two-thirds of the final manuscript. She projects what the device might do beyond calculation – even suggesting that music could be encoded into numbers and the device could compose. She considers a sample problem and lays out the steps the analytical engine would need to follow to come up with an answer – essentially creating the first programming language.

She was an amazing woman. She clearly didn’t fit into her time, which wanted to keep women bound to the home. When she disagreed with Charles – and a couple of their arguments play out in front of us – she did not give an inch. Th program suggests books to teach young girls about Ada so they too might succeed in math and technology.

Ada died young and the last scene of the play is encountering her father in the afterlife. They begin to understand each other and she begins to forgive him for being absent in her life. She says her fascination with numbers is partly because they don’t abandon you and they don’t die.

Charles didn’t actually complete either the difference engine or the analytical engine, mostly due to funding issues. However, others have used his designs and constructed the actual machines. And they worked.

The story was well told and the acting fine. I’m glad to learn a bit more of my professional ancestry.