It seems only yesterday that Netropolitan鈥檚 phone line delivered Web pages
achingly slowly. Come to think of it, it was only yesterday. Still, at least
it鈥檚 faster than if we had to rely on the mechanical computers that so
fascinated Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace.
The countess, who was the daughter of Lord Byron, worked on computers with
Charles Babbage in the mid-19th century, and some believe her extensive notes on
Babbage鈥檚 engines amount to a computer language of sorts. Now she鈥檚 the subject
of a new movie, Conceiving Ada, whose website is at
www.ted.net/ada/html/hpindex.html. Hollywood wasn鈥檛 just interested in her
mind鈥攂ut in her racy reputation. Books often portray her as promiscuous
and addicted to drugs and gambling.
In the movie, a present-day researcher rigs her computer to go back in
time鈥攁s you do鈥攁nd contacts Lovelace, played by Tilda Swinton.
Lovelace is portrayed as a 19th-century genius with 20th-century concerns. Catch
some not altogether flattering reviews at the brilliant Internet Movie Database
(www.imdb.com)鈥攋ust enter the movie鈥檚 name. Burdened by caring for her
three children and her status as a society woman, she had trouble pursuing the
mathematics that was her passion. Worse, Lovelace died an early death from
uterine cancer鈥攚ithout feeling she had fulfilled her true potential in her
work.
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Flying in the face of popular belief, historian Betty Toole denies that
Lovelace鈥檚 notes on using Babbage鈥檚 machines were a computer language. They may
not even have been all her own work. Toole has edited many of Lovelace鈥檚 letters
and notes, and published them in a book: Ada, the Enchantress of
Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1998). Lovelace did, however, foresee that
computing machines would one day compose music, produce graphics and be used for
both practical and scientific purposes, Toole says on her site at
www.well.com/user/adatoole/.
