The Biographies of Women Mathematicians web site notes that Ada, Countess Lovelace's social life "in addition to Charles Babbage, included Sir David Brewster (the originator of the kaleidoscope)...[and] Charles Dickens." Verity Stob thinks this may explain a famous failure.
Verity is the pseudonym of a programmer based in the UK. She can be contacted at VerityStobddj.com.
February 3rd 184-. I attended Mr. Babbage at his house to show him my new translation of Signor Menabrea's paper on the great Analytical Engine, and—dear diary, I whisper it only to you—to mention my ideas about the generation of Bernoulli sequences. To my chagrin, I found Mr. B not at all receptive. He made great pretenses of enthusiasm about "such noble and thoughtful scratchings that ever proceeded from the pen of a member of the weaker sex," but I was undeceived. There was some matter troubling him.
When his man, who served us tea and lit the candles, had left the room, I made to ask what was the cause of his pensiveness. Mr. B said, "Oh, Lady Lovelace! Do look at this—it is wonderful!"
From his desk drawer he produced a cylinder fashioned of brass of about ten inches in length and two inches in diameter, with a graspable furled collar that could be twisted. A hole was drilled at one end; the other was covered with some translucent material.
"Why Mr. Babbage, for once I have the advantage of you," I said. "It is Sir David Brewster's beautiful-form-instrument, and it produces pleasing charming symmetrical patterns when one claps the device to one's eye. I met Sir David at the greekmonger's, where he had taken it to get it properly named, and he shewed it me."
"You know already? Then you know that I am too late."
"Too late, Mr. Babbage? Pray tell me, for what?"
"Can you really not see it, my lady? This is surely the advance in the art of entertainment that the 19th century has been waiting for. When Brewster's work falls into the hands of the common people, the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall will be deserted in the evenings and the very ale will go sour in its barrels at the inns for want of customers. They will all be sitting at homes; twirling, twirling their brass tubes."
"Surely you exaggerate Mr. Babbage. Sir David's invention is very clever, but it becomes quite dull after three or four minutes. I'm sure you could easily devise something twice as amusing."
"Do you really think so?" He turned to me, and I noticed that his face was livid with excitement. "Of course! Yes! You are right, my lady. I shall devise an engine so marvellous that the talk will be of nothing else from Truro to Dundee. I must start at once!"
After this, he began feverishly turning the leaves of his notebook and scribbling furiously, and I could get no more sense out of him. I fear this bodes no good.
February 21st. Again to the house of Mr B. This time I hoped to present to him some thoughts I had had about backing store where the machine might "remember" its state, and the idea of making it jump backwards in its list of instructions so that it might accomplish complex tasks by repetition of simple ones. Again, I was to be disappointed.
I found him in his workshop, where crouched one of his great iron machines, with a ladder leaned against it. I saw that it was an old Difference Engine of the kind that I had supposed Mr. B to have put to one side. He was seated on top of the machine, adjusting the mechanism, and invited me to join him there.
I said, "In these shoes? I think not. Mayn't you join me in the terrestrial sphere?"
He came down the ladder.
"I am most delighted to see you, my lady, for you are just in time to witness the first trial. Howe: Start turning now."
His manservant began vigorously cranking a handle attached to the machine, which shook and trembled as its mechanism came alive. Mr. B pointed to a small crystal window in the machine's side, behind which I could see various coloured shapes moving.
"You manipulate the dropping shape with these levers, and when you make a line of the same colour, they all disappear...like this!" As he spoke, there was a terrible screeching, followed by a loud crash, then silence. The servant stopped cranking. A gearwheel pinged to the ground and rolled along the parquet. Mr B. wrote something on a piece of paper affixed to the machine. I walked over and read it:
1st—C.B.—points
"Highest scores table," explained Mr. Charles Babbage.
March 4th. Attended at Mr. Babbage's late, for dear little Lady Byron had fallen upon her knee while at play. That fool of a nurse had put vinegar on the place and made the child howl fit to shake the foundations, requiring my intercession. I had planned to tell Mr B. about an extended system of instructing (or "programming") that I have devised for the Analytical Engine, which I am provisionally calling "Generic Haskell." As is the usual case of recent times, I found Mr B. quite distracted with nonsense.
"Good evening, Lady Lovelace. I trust you are feeling sane, tame, and advantageous to know?" This got us off to a bad start as I find it most disagreeable when inconsiderate persons mock me with the memory of Papa.
"I am very well, thank you Mr Babbage," I said coolly. "How are you progressing with the Tetris Engine?"
"Oh, I have given up on that—now I have a new idea," he said impatiently. "I am building a machine that can automatically write out English sentences."
"Yes?" I was taunted by hope; this sounded more like the Mr. B of old.
"And I will use it to create my Text Adventure Engine. I am negotiating a cross-media tie-in with your novelist friend Dickens. Look, I have already thought of an initial scenario." He gestured to his daybook, wherein he had written: You are in a workhouse with no gruel.
"But what about all the mathematical and practical things you were going to do? Your engines were to be a great benefit to the world!"
"Don't worry, sweet Lady Lovelace," he said complacently. "There will be time enough for that."
Dedicated to the Popcap Games web site, without which this article might have been submitted on time.
DDJ
