Lord Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace understood the poetry of mathematics – as Connie Huq showed in this fascinating study
• Great Lives
• Tweet of the Day
People knew how to pay a compliment back in the day. Mathematician Ada Lovelace was called both "an enchantress of numbers" and a "princess of parallelograms", which seems appropriate, as she is considered to be the world's first computer programmer. On *Great Lives* (Radio 4), fangirl Konnie Huq – who was going to study engineering before being distracted by the bright lights of television – extolled her many virtues and contributions.
The only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, Ada was raised by her mother to be as unromantic as possible – mathematics would keep any inherited madness at bay. "If she schooled her in maths and science, it would allow her to be a proper young lady rather than the wild and tempestuous woman that she feared Ada might grow into," said social technologist Suw Charman-Anderson. Equations as preventative therapy? It worked. She was "a little girl fascinated by machines". Even so, she still inherited some flightier notions: in a letter to Michael Faraday, 14-year-old Ada wrote: "You have excited in my mind a ridiculous, but not ungraceful, allegorical picture: that of a quiet demure plodding tortoise, with a beautiful fairy gambolling round it in a thousand radiant & varying hues." She was the fairy, Faraday the tortoise. "You can almost see the poet in her," marvelled Huq.
Later, Matthew Parris said: "I'm going to ask a really stupid question," so I leaned into the radio, because those are my speciality. "What is the difference, conceptually, between a computer and a calculating machine?" It wasn't that stupid, Matthew. "Ada actually saw that computers had possibilities beyond just working out numbers," Huq said. "She said it could create art and music. She was born in the wrong era."
Like many great women, Ada had vices, such as gambling. "And wine," interjected Parris, but Charman-Anderson brushed that aside: "Everyone was on the wine, and the opium and the laudanum and the absinthe, so she wasn't unusual there at all." Those Victorians were a wild bunch.
They would have appreciated the calm of birdsong, as heard on *Tweet of the Day* (Radio 4). This week, we've had a hobby, a turnstone, a great shearwater and a thrush nightingale. Ninety seconds of gentle reflection, just before 6am. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
• Great Lives
• Tweet of the Day
People knew how to pay a compliment back in the day. Mathematician Ada Lovelace was called both "an enchantress of numbers" and a "princess of parallelograms", which seems appropriate, as she is considered to be the world's first computer programmer. On *Great Lives* (Radio 4), fangirl Konnie Huq – who was going to study engineering before being distracted by the bright lights of television – extolled her many virtues and contributions.
The only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, Ada was raised by her mother to be as unromantic as possible – mathematics would keep any inherited madness at bay. "If she schooled her in maths and science, it would allow her to be a proper young lady rather than the wild and tempestuous woman that she feared Ada might grow into," said social technologist Suw Charman-Anderson. Equations as preventative therapy? It worked. She was "a little girl fascinated by machines". Even so, she still inherited some flightier notions: in a letter to Michael Faraday, 14-year-old Ada wrote: "You have excited in my mind a ridiculous, but not ungraceful, allegorical picture: that of a quiet demure plodding tortoise, with a beautiful fairy gambolling round it in a thousand radiant & varying hues." She was the fairy, Faraday the tortoise. "You can almost see the poet in her," marvelled Huq.
Later, Matthew Parris said: "I'm going to ask a really stupid question," so I leaned into the radio, because those are my speciality. "What is the difference, conceptually, between a computer and a calculating machine?" It wasn't that stupid, Matthew. "Ada actually saw that computers had possibilities beyond just working out numbers," Huq said. "She said it could create art and music. She was born in the wrong era."
Like many great women, Ada had vices, such as gambling. "And wine," interjected Parris, but Charman-Anderson brushed that aside: "Everyone was on the wine, and the opium and the laudanum and the absinthe, so she wasn't unusual there at all." Those Victorians were a wild bunch.
They would have appreciated the calm of birdsong, as heard on *Tweet of the Day* (Radio 4). This week, we've had a hobby, a turnstone, a great shearwater and a thrush nightingale. Ninety seconds of gentle reflection, just before 6am. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.