2. Ada Lovelace: The rebellious romantic who birthed the digital age

Ada Lovelace: The Visionary Who Birthed the Digital Age

In this episode of 'She Changed History,' Simon and Vicky discuss the life and legacy of Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician and visionary. They delve into her background as the daughter of poet Lord Byron, her intellectual pursuits in mathematics and logic, and her revolutionary collaboration with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the analytical engine. Ada's unique ability to combine her rigorous STEM education with creative thinking led her to write the first algorithm designed for a computer, making her a pioneer of computer science. The hosts explore her challenging upbringing, societal expectations, and lasting impact on women in STEM, making the case for why her contributions are vital to the digital world we live in today.

Sources

• San Diego Supercomputer Center sdsc.edu
• history.com
• Article on Max Planck institute mpg.de 
• Article by Stephen Wolfram

00:00 Casual Banter and Introductions

01:17 Introducing Ada Lovelace

03:48 Ada's Early Life and Family

14:04 Ada's Intellectual Pursuits and Marriage

16:15 Meeting Charles Babbage

16:42 Early Computers and Their Mechanics

19:21 Babbage's Analytical Engine: A Revolutionary Design

20:14 Ada Lovelace: The Visionary Mathematician

21:32 Ada's Unique Perspective on Computing

25:59 The First Algorithm: Ada's Groundbreaking Work

32:35 Legacy and Recognition: Ada's Enduring Impact

37:43 Celebrating Women in STEM: Ada's Influence Today

39:30 Conclusion and Future Episodes

Transcript

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don't do hair and makeup for the pod either. No, maybe we should. Well I'm loving the t shirt, check shirt combo, that's going to be my Babe, lumberjack. Yeah, exactly, I'm slipping into my winter wardrobe shortly. Still got the last remnants of holiday gear. Oh, Doesn't it? It's very August. Yeah, it's very August of early November. This is my engagement shirt. Oh, it's your engagement shirt. That's, yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. Happy memory share. Very nice. Well, shall we do this in our limberjacket engagement shirts? Shall we go? Let's make it happen. So I'm really excited about today's, and this is a topic, it's a geeky topic. It's a geeky podcast, mate. It's a pretty geeky podcast, but this is, this is geeky geeky. Great. welcome everyone to She Changed History. I'm Simon. I'm Vicky. Introduction's done. Let's introduce this week's. That's all we need. That's all we, that is all we need. I want to, I'm keen for this one. this week's, woman who changed history is Ada Lovelace. And she will probably be more familiar to more listeners than many of our subjects. She is one of those names that I think people know, but they maybe don't know why they would you say that's true? Yeah. Oh, they're great. Great. So let's figure out the why, shall we? Indeed, yeah. Ada Lovelace, the rebellious romantic who birthed the digital age. That's a title. That's a hell of a title, isn't it? Ada Lovelace, the daughter of famed poet Lord Byron, was a 19th century mathematician and visionary who became a pioneer of computer science. Despite facing societal constraints and a challenging upbringing, she embraced intellectual pursuits, excelling in mathematics and logic. Her collaboration with Charles Babbage, inventor of the analytical engine, a precursor to our modern day computer, led to her most significant achievement. In her legacy inspires women in STEM, proving that brilliance can defy societal expectations. Ada Lovelace dared to dream of a future where technology could augment human creativity, a vision that continues to shape our digital world today. It's so true, isn't it? Like, can you imagine what Ada Lovelace would make of things like Instagram and TikTok? Absolutely blow her mind. Like, that you can drive a car with a computer. Yeah. I reckon some of her dreams must have come true. Right. Yeah. And as we'll discuss later, the sort of dreams, you kind of dream within the context and the constraints of society as it is. So the things that we can do on computers these days, people didn't even imagine, even photography And now we've got Instagram. So she wouldn't necessarily have dreamt that, but she was dreaming, composing music on a computer. A number of sources today. The main ones are articles on the San Diego Supercomputer Center website, history. com. There's an article on the Max Planck Institute. There's an article by Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha fame. There's a lot you can read. Nice. So did you study Ada at school? No, me neither. No, no, no, no Ada at school. Just, just childhood geekiness. I see, I see. It'd be cool if we could teach kids about her. Yeah, I wouldn't, I don't know if she gets taught these days. Well, Ada's childhood was unusual. By any standard, it was unusual. She was born on December the 10th, 1815, Augusta Ada Byron, to Lord Byron, the Lord Byron, and Annabella Milbank. So Ada was her middle name. Yeah. Her middle name, but, Lord Byron always, always called her Ada for the five weeks that he was with them. So five weeks after her birth, he left and went to live in Greece and never came back. Can I ask if this episode is going to be a Byron bashing session? Byron will get very little mention after this little introduction. I have got some fun facts about Byron actually. I think I don't have much time for him. Do you not? No. Because he was a, an absolute rake Quite the rake. A scoundrel. That's very polite. That's a very polite way of putting I feel like that's how they would have expressed it back in the day. Yeah. Oh, boys will be boys. Yeah. Like he was such a scoundrel that you had to leave the country. He's just sowing his seeds. Yeah, in a lot of places. He did love animals though. It's Cambridge College, they wouldn't allow dogs. So he got a pet bear instead. I kind of, I do, there are many negatives about him, but I do like that level of belligerence. That is very, that's what Musk would do today. Okay, okay. That's enough Byron. Yeah, I'm done with him already. You're already done with Byron? Fair enough. So, five weeks after Ada is born, Byron leaves. And he died when she was eight. So, absent father figure, but it's probably one of the things that most people know about Ada Lovelace. Now, Ada had a really bad relationship with her mother, her mother Annabella, Lady Middlebank. Really poor relationship. and was often cared for by her grandmother, Judith. Okay, and some titles as well. So spent a lot of time in the care of her grandmother, Judith, but Lady Byron still wanted to, they were born to a sort of quite an upper class, very upper class society, family, and Lady Byron had to present herself as a loving mother with maternal concern and instinct. So she would write letters to Judith, but in these letters, she referred to Ada as it. letters to the grandma. Mum writing a letter to the grandma. Yeah, and would refer to Ada as it, and would put a cover letter with it saying keep these letters in case I ever need to prove I was a loving mother. So there's a sort of disparity between her actual behaviour and the image she wishes to present. I am doing this against my will, love mum. She really was, yeah. her mum had a very harsh religious upbringing. Okay. Okay. and imposed some of this on Ada, even if Ada didn't necessarily know it at the time. she would get people to follow Ada around when she was a teenager to make sure that she wasn't breaking any, moral deviation. Oh, this is the mum? This is the mum. The mum? Yeah, that's such a random use of time. Isn't it? The mother had a lot of worries because, her father, Lord Byron, let us not mention him again, was a bit mad. He was definitely a bit mad and she was worried that Ada would inherit this wildness, these mental issues. So from a young age, she pushed her towards studying, maths, logic, and science. As a way of trying to contain and suppress, any what she called poetic tendencies. that's a very depressing line, isn't it? Yeah. so pushed her towards STEM topics, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics won't be the last time we mentioned STEM. And she had quite a, contained sickly childhood. She was paralyzed after a bout of. measles. Oh, okay. And so she was bedbound for a year, other things, but she got to study a lot. She was pushed towards maths and science, but she did, despite her mother's best efforts, still have these poetic tendencies and went on these sort of flights of fancy and flights of invention, even when she was young. Uh, so at one point she decided she wanted to be able to fly. And rather than just imagining how to fly, she actually went through the stages of designing A way to fly and she studied the anatomy of birds and figured out how to make wings and tested different materials and figured out how many feathers she would need in order to build a wing large enough for herself to fly and she put this down all into a book afterwards. she Do you think that's what they were worried about? When they, when they write down poetic tendencies, did you think that, oh, she wants to be a bird? I think it goes beyond poetic tendencies. Yeah. She surpassed any poetic tendencies, yeah. That's pretty cool though, and it does have that childlike wonder about it, doesn't it? It really does. Like, I want to be a bird. Yeah, definitely. And then, of course, everything that flies must have feathers. that's such a logical leap, isn't it, for a 13, 14 year old. I love it. Already at this stage, she was combining these sort of hard sciences in maths, logic, and Adding in a creativity is around, around them as well. So less of a pure mathematician. I'm going to go into some sort of geeky side streets along here. pure mathematics is sort of the pursuit of mathematics for mathematics sake. So you are coming up with, you Uh, methods. but she transitioned even with this flying machine, she's then acting more like an engineer and an engineer, for me, speaking as an engineer, combines the mathematics developed by the pure mathematicians with art and creativity and let's say poetic tendencies. and finding ways to use the mathematics as a tool, but then thinking what that can then be applied to in real life. And she's already showing these signs. Early on. The peak of that are who design roller coasters, I think. I think they have the best combination of science and thrill. You're clinical of engineering. Yeah, but to me it's like, the dream. I thought you were going to say rocket scientists, but no. No, just roller coasters. It's as high as I can go. She had. They were a rich family. They were well to do, high society, rich family. So she had private tutors, and very, unconventional upbringing. Tutors for particular things, looked after by her grandmother. So in many ways a typical Victorian upbringing, very strict in some ways, but with an unusual amount of intellectual freedom. Did she have any brothers and sisters? It sounds quite lonely. She did, but didn't know them for a long time. her siblings were only half siblings. So she was the only legitimate child between Byron and Milbank. And then many, many other half siblings on both sides. This is, early 19th century high society, this is where, think Bridgerton, uh, you would be presented to the court, you would become of age, be presented to the court, the debutante ball And she was presented to the court at the age of 17, very popular sort of bell of the season. Was she the bell? She was the bell. She was the bell of the ball. She was very charming. She inherited her father's charm and wit and ability to, befriend people and hold an audience and, was very likable. She liked to dance. People appreciated her intellect. so she had not just the education and facts to go with it, but also intellectually, she was strong, witty, sharp, fast, a real thinker. I think it doesn't surprise me with that background, like you're, you're taught aren't you to speak to adults? And I think, so then being debuted to a room full of fully fledged adults, you must be one step up, right? Yeah, it's a sort of training and it's something, and it is a skill. And it's a skill that comes with practice. It's not very, there is obviously some natural element to it, but it requires confidence and confidence practice. So yeah. And so much of that natural element is actually developed in the really early years a child and the influence that you get then. And that can give you a sufficient head start that you carry that head start. If she was with her grandmother, and team of private tutors. Of course she's going to be charming. Yeah. And most people described her as being dainty lovely. Although one fellow, John Hobhouse, Who she didn't initially get on with, but they did later become friends. She'd been taught by her mother to dislike all of her father's friends, of which he was one. Ha, classic. Yeah, he described her as a large, coarse skinned young woman, but with something of my friend's features, particularly the mouth. Oh, coarse skinned, so specific. Coarse skinned, isn't it? They did later become friends. Okay. So she's this sort of charismatic, intelligent young woman,. And at the age of 19, she becomes a countess following her marriage to William King, who is the Earl of Lovelace. So this is where she changes, her name becomes Ada Lovelace. The greatest name of all time, Ada Lovelace. Beautiful name. It's amazing, isn't it? I love it, yeah. She does fulfil this societal role, this expectation of a, you know, the trajectory for upper class society women at this time, as you have an education, you get presented at the ball, you find a husband, you have a family, you bring up the next generation. And, and so it continues. So she fulfilled that role, she was a wife and mother, she had three children. But during this time, she still maintained all of her intellectual pursuits and interests. So she's living married life, is she? She's quite enjoying married life. And her education in her early years, yes, she had all of these STEM things, but she also got educated, as you would expect, in music and literature, philosophy. Oh, so it was like well rounded. It ended up being quite well rounded. And this gave her sort of a really holistic perspective on things, and it was unusual to have that combination for a woman in Victorian times. Embraced sort of self directed learning. She was just enthused by learning and intellectually interested. And was fortunate to have many mentors and other acquaintances. She was introduced to Andrew Cross, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday of Cage fame. She even knew Charles Dickens. One of her tutors was Mary Somerville, who is definitely a topic for another, another day, another podcast. she was first honorary female member of the Royal Astronomical Society. And so she herself was a very impressive woman and she was one of, she was one of Ada's tutors. So she had all this inspiration. I bet she was just buzzing. I bet it was just so exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And at a, at the age of 17, before she was married, she was actually introduced by Mary Somerville to a fella called Charles So Charles Babbage, was a mechanical engineer and mathematician who was working on and developing initially something called a difference engine, which he later turned into his analytical engine. Analytical engine. Analytical engine, So, I'm going to talk about computers, briefly. Okay. and these days you look at computers and you just see a microchip and a screen and it does something magical happens and AI talks to you. And then you get mad when AI doesn't give you the right answer and then, yeah, you throw it out the window. That's it, because this amazing thing that basically society at large has done nothing to. build is now furious when it isn't perfect within the first couple of years of us discovering it. Me. Society is me. Yeah. If most people I would guess when asked about first computers and the history of computers would think of Alan Turing, famous for building computers during World War II that cracked the Enigma code. Yeah. Alan Turing himself was. inspired by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. Oh, that's a cool fact. Come on. That's amazing. So babbage and Lovelace are working a hundred years before Alan Turing came along, before the first proper computer, as we would imagine it today, was built. And computers are just switches. There are lots and lots of switches, and those switches allow These days it's electricity to pass on a particular path. And that electricity going one way then flicks some other switches, which changes the way that the electricity goes. And those electrical signals, you can, create arrangements of them, setups of them, that allow you to say, if this is true, go this way, if it's false, go this way. And that combination of the true or false, these days represented in binary, allows us to then write ever more complex, Programs, algorithms for calculating two plus four or for displaying a web page or coming up with AI. It's such a simple concept, isn't it? Like on or off, yes or no, true or false. And then entire worlds are built on that. I love the worlds. I love the simplicity versus, complex juxtaposition, I love it, It's fabulous, isn't it? And so the difference engine was, you Essentially a calculator, it was a mechanical calculator that would do operations on numbers. You had an input, it worked on punch cards, punch cards, which actually, you know, similar concept. My mother and father used punch cards in their early years working with computers. when computers were the size of a room and you would put these punch cards in and that's what the program was stored on. That's what the data was stored on and Babbage had punch cards. So it would read a number. Read the operation go through and it was mechanical switches, the analytical engine that he designed, but unfortunately never got a chance to build, was a digital mechanical. So it did use some electricity, but just through the switches. was able to have conditional logic. So it could have, if this then do something, it could have loops, recursive loops where you'd go around, and perform quite extraordinary things at the time, had he been able to make it as the sort of the first. Computer that's made that would have been considered what's called Turing complete. And so it could have been programmed to do anything that a computer now does. It was a legitimate, proper design for a computer. It was like a foundation.

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So Did he teach Ada? What was their relationship? He and Ada met when she was 17 and got talking about what he was working on. He was working on the difference engine, the analytical engine, and she was Just fascinated, inspired, amazed by the potential that she saw in this machine. Babbage had come at it from a mathematical point of view. He wanted to have a faster way of doing very difficult calculations. There are so many calculations that are done, these days by engineers that happen in design software. The, the software just deals with back then. If you wanted to design something, you had to manually do each calculation. If you wanted to know if your bridge stood up, if it would stand up in particular weather, if it would carry a weight, if your crane would work, if water would flow in a particular way in a pipe, the pressure difference, all of these things, you had to do those calculations by hand and those calculations are very complicated and they take a long time to do, Babbage was working on it as a way of speeding up numerical calculations. He was all about the efficiency. He's like, get this. All about the efficiency, all about the numbers. Ada came along and had a completely different view. And we spoke about her education and her upbringing and yes, she was incredibly well versed on the mathematics, but she'd also been surrounded by, the society and an education of music and literature and saw the analytic engine, not. As a fast calculator, but as something that could manipulate all of these other entities. She was thinking of a way that other things could be represented within this analytic engine. That we could then perform actions on them. Perform what we now know as algorithms. So she thought that you could have representations for musical notes. rather than numbers. Oh, I see what you're saying. So she was applying it to society. She is. Yeah. And to be able to do other things with it beyond adding up numbers. She was amazed by the calculations it would be able to do. And that was one aspect of it. But she saw these, this massive and complex collection of switches and logic boards. She saw numbers as one way that you could interpret it, but you could also use that to represent language, to represent music and other things. So she came at it with such a different point of view. She's very smart, because that's breaking the mould, that is. Really breaking the mould. It is, it's challenging. Or is a lead expert by the sounds of it in their field, and then challenging that and driving that forward to another level. And yeah, that takes some skill as a 17-year-old Right? Teenage, right. That takes some balls. Yeah. And okay. Like when you look at computers today and the transition that they've had from 50 years ago where they were in the workplace, in banks. For accountants, they were fast. They were just fast calculators is what we use them for early on. They taken off in the home space in the mobile phone is a computer in our pocket, occasionally you might bring up the calculator, we're using this amazing technology to represent. All the other things in our world to represent music, to show us video, to be creative, to have photographs, all of this. And she really saw that this was a tool that went so far beyond just the numbers. That's imagination, isn't it? That's the girl who wanted to fly. That was really, that was vision. Babbage described her approach as poetic science. And what was she criticised for? It's a lovely contrast to her poetic tendencies. Oh, I love that. It turns out these poetic tendencies were really her strength in this, in this field. It really is, isn't it? Yeah. She was mentored by a fellow called Augustus De Morgan, Okay. who, uh, as a prominent mathematician at the time and recognized her talent because she was an incredibly talented mathematician. She had the vision as well, but she really was good at the hard stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah. So just bringing these things together and this and Augustus De Morgan recognized her talent in STEM and really challenged her and took her to the next level. Mathematically, and it was his guidance that was crucial for her to be able to engage with Babbage's work. So she worked okay with Babbage? Corresponded with Babbage very close to him for, she was unfortunately only 36 when she died. She died at 36. Yeah. I didn't know that. From cancer. Oh God. Yeah. But in that time she worked very closely with Babbage. Okay. And had. such a core understanding of what he was doing whilst also bringing her other perspective and he was so fond of her he called her the enchantress of numbers. I like these compliments. I would like, they're great, aren't they? I get good work, Vicky. I don't get the enchantress of numbers. Enchantress of emails. Yeah. Come on, guys. Come on. I did a beautiful Excel formula. now a number of articles were written about, uh, the analytical engine, Babbage gave some talks in various places and showed his designs and what he was planning to do. There was a particular article written by an Italian scientist which Ada translated in 1843. Okay. So there was a paper this Italian had written and she translated it into English. Very clever. But she added her own notes. To the translation of this article and the notes that she wrote were three times longer than the original article. So this is that thing again, isn't it about extending and pushing forward and It's like elevating is already there, isn't it? It's the imagination element. Yeah. It's something to be cherished, isn't it? Because it gets lost, I think, in our society so quickly. The minute you hit secondary school, it's SATs, it's GCSEs, school is a massive memory test, basically, isn't it? It doesn't encourage imagination, elevation, vision. Mm hmm. Yeah. She has somehow been in this world where she must feel confident enough to keep pushing and keep exploring three times longer. Did you say three times longer than the original article? She's like, have you thought about, I wonder if that went down well or not. I don't know. Oh, it did. she just embraced the education so much that she took on board all of these different tools. Which is a special thing to do, to embrace it. It's very different to be, because anyone could have been taught all those things by all those mentors. But if you know how to use it, if you know the potential, the possibilities of it, that's what she was unusual in bringing together and particularly in this time being a woman, she was supposed to look pretty, bring up children, yeah, present maternal concern as her mother was so worried about. It's, it's not letting go of that childhood wonder, isn't it? And that childhood imagination, it's not letting that go. Spark. Die. And she was so young when she met Babbage. She was only 17, so she probably still had that childhood wonder. Maybe it was good that they met at that age. So she translates this article into English. Adds notes. And in the notes she outlines some of the real core concepts that made the design of the analytical engine different. The fact that it could do loops, so it could do a calculation and then redo the calculation based on that new figure and keep, or work through a series of things, repeating the same action. Conditional branching, which is a decision tree. It's like, yeah, if this is true, do this. If it's not, do this. She expanded upon this and then wrote an algorithm for the analytical engine. Bear in mind, this is a vastly complex digital mechanical machine. Which she wrote the first algorithm, it sounds like. And she wrote the first algorithm for a computer. What? And this is a machine that doesn't actually exist. So she couldn't, she couldn't test it. Oh, so this is all theory? Again, this is all theory. It was only the design of the machine that had been done. Oh, okay. And she understood it so well that she then wrote an algorithm for it to calculate what's called the Bernoulli numbers. Which, this is not the Bernoulli numbers. She writes this algorithm. Let me get a picture for you. Because that's all, the algorithm, as we know it today, is integral to so many economic and cultural moments, isn't it, in society today. And she wrote the first one. Wow. Oh, it's come through. I So what, this is what I'm looking at is the algorithm, yeah? This is the algorithm that she wrote. Wow. So it's 25 lines long, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, about 15 columns wide, and a ton of variables. Too many variables to shake a stick at really, but that's incredible. And it's on this like oldie worldie paper. Yeah. She's constructing this out of, the theory and of such a deep understanding of how the machine works and how the mathematics works in order to be able to write down so an algorithm a step by step series of instructions and people may have written instructions before how to build a wall someone must have documented that how to cook a I don't know a chicken chasser a recipe can be seen as an algorithm but this was the first algorithm written for what we would consider a computer I can see here it says two plus one equals three, which I find very reassuring. That's about the level I'll tap out at. Yeah, that's, I'm good now. Thanks. Thanks, Ada. It's very exciting. Yeah. And not how it would look, you know what I mean? I was thinking equals and then, you know, like an Excel formula. Well, no, because these days we look at programming and we program in programming languages. We use words, we use symbols to represent things. So this is the structure of the algorithm, how it would have worked on the punch cards. It's a series of holes. so in the notes, she wrote this and her and Babbage may have, worked together on it, but she published it, it is widely recognized as the first, um, algorithm for a computer. And she was applying this to the, to the scientific, this was a scientific algorithm for calculating the Bernoulli numbers. Useful, complex. Well, she wrote the notes on the sheet of paper, she had the idea. she had the leverage, the influence, the persuasion to bring other people on board with that idea. People like Babbage who had that experience A hundred years before the next actual sort of working computer that came along and before we would recognize an algorithm as we do today. I think it's a really good differentiation it took a hundred years to get from Ada to Turing, but then in the last five years or the last ten years, we've gone from no AI to Gemini. It's exponential, isn't it? The change, but it had to start somewhere. And this, one of the very early, programming languages, which was actually developed by the, U. S. Department of Defense was named after her, named Ada. Ada. Ada. Yes, she died at the age of 36, unfortunately, from uterine cancer, and it's pretty devastating because the work that she'd achieved in just those, we're talking 19 years since she met Babbage and she died, so she's only been working on these things for half of her life, and what she maybe could have gone on to do. Because it feels like she had the inclination and had the spirit and the drive and the ambition to. She really did, yeah. Yes, sad. Her work was, initially, Overlooked and sort of lost for a bit, but was rediscovered in the mid 20th century with the rise of modern computing When she was recognized as a pioneer of computer science And just a real visionary decades and decades ahead of her time. She was in a territory at the time didn't exist. She wasn't expanding on an existing field. She was at the absolute forefront of recognizing this revolutionary technology And, uh, 20th century, I bet there's a link between her and Grace Hopper, who, um, also designed a computer language, didn't she? You know Grace Hopper? I love Grace Hofer. I think she's the one of the coolest ladies in her little navy uniform with her massive hat and she's like, I'm just going to create this program for you boys. Don't you worry about it, mate. And then she refused to retire, which I also adore. So the sort of link between them, they didn't personally know each other. Yeah. Um, so Ada Lovelace. is recognized as writing the first algorithm intended to be executed by a computer. Grace Hopper, designed the first what's called a compiler and a compiler is one of these Fundamental things that makes it possible to program in the way that we do today if you look at a programming language these days, we write words and those words then Do an action if you go like even just in excel you might equal sum or vlookup or something That vlookup isn't Doing anything that is You Then being translated into something the computer understands. And it's a compiler that takes, a way that we can easily understand it and turns it into the thing that computer can understand and run. And so that really just plays into Ada's idea that we can have computers representing things other than the true or false or just the numbers. Yeah, Grace Hopper was incredible. I think, we should do an episode. Cause she's got such a strong story. yeah. You know. Oh, it's amazing, because I think she came up with, COBOL. Yeah, she did, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the language or something, the program. Yeah, yeah, it was still used. So Ada today is not as well known for what she does as I think she should be, because I'm absolutely in love with the woman. I think she's incredible. She combines all of my own interests and digital at a time when And she was Belle of the Ball. And she was Belle of the Ball, which I was also Belle of the Ball, so we had so much in common. But she just bucked the trend so much, she bucked expectation of society, and I think it's really important. Something I take from her is, like looking at CEOs of companies or women in politics and things. And the best person for the job isn't necessarily the one with the most technical skill, And she had an exceptional sort of mathematical and technical skill, but brought such a different point of view onto what this machine could be, what it could mean for society, what it could be used for. And it's a point of view that if Babbage should just worked on his own, or had worked with fellow scientists akin to Babbage, who were coming at it from such a pure and theoretical point of view, that I just don't think they would have had. And it's, I love this sort of combination of an old mechanical engineer and mathematician and young bell of the ball. They clash, don't they, so, well you think they clash, they maybe don't clash as much as we think they do, but, there was a really, special overlap there, and, they had a really special bond. But she did all that with such a turbulent home life as well, like such a, I imagine, I don't know, I could be wrong, that she would feel quite lost and quite, like I said before, isolated because she's got a weird standoffish mother yeah, she managed to Change the world and change the world not just for her generation for but for multiple. It's so inspiring and cool. So these days we have Ada Lovelace Day celebrating women in STEM Yes, the Lovelace Medal awarded by the British Computer Society As the Ada Lovelace Institute which researches ethical AI. And myriad other awards, things that have been named after her. She is getting more and more recognition. And even though

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like, it's

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difficult to put what she did into a modern context and like she didn't Invent Instagram She wrote this algorithm, and it was so unexpected and abnormal for someone from her background and. her gender, uh, to be able to do it, I think should serve as a real sort of inspiration. And it's like that alternative point of view you've got, be proud of that. Absolutely. The rebellious romantic, that was so apt. That's such a good terminology for what it was. Yeah, absolutely. I haven't really got a conclusion other than, enjoy learning. Yeah. That's such a huge takeaway. Embrace it. Embrace learning. And that's what we're doing here, isn't it? Look at us, like doing all this research, and I don't know about you, but I love researching these women and I love discovering and going down all the rabbit holes and about the context of where these people were and basically the expectations that They were put into, so in our way, we're like our own mini aders, aren't we? Like our own mini adventure. Flippin heck, I'll take that. Mini aders right here. Vicky, the enchantress of podcasts. Thank you. Oh, finally, the credit I deserve. So that's Ada. There's a lot more to say. There are many other episodes we can do. We need to do one on Grace Hopper. We need to do one on Mary Somerville and see how these amazing women overlap, maybe not in time, but in their, approach and the way they bucked that trend Are you saying we should come back and do another episode? Is that what you're saying? We should come back and do another episode. Yeah, I'm going to spend the rest of my afternoon fanboying over Ada Lovelace. Yay! So, thank you for listening, if you enjoyed it, please like, subscribe and give us a rating, that would really help. We also have the Facebook group, please join that, because there's lots of people sharing amazing women on there as well, and it's a really fab little community we're setting up. We have Insta, we have YouTube now. We have videos on YouTube. Oh my God, we're doing it all. So yeah, thank you. You can see Vicky's fabulous lumberjack outfit. And Simon's engagement dress. Thanks for joining us and come back for the next episode. See you soon. Bye.