Who was Ada? David_Botton David@Botton.com Lady Lovelace died in 1852 at the age of 36. Her father was the poet Lord Byron who, while still a bachelor, underwent an experience that was to have profound effects upon his only legitimate child, born Augusta Ada Byron. At 25, he fell in love with his married half sister, Augusta Leigh; and to deny that an incestuous relationship existed between them is to ignore an overwhelming body of evidence, although his paternity of her daughter Elizabeth Medora Leigh, born in 1814, is less certain. In January 1815, Byron married Annabella Milbanke, a puritanical young woman of good family and an amateur mathematician. Unfortunately, their personalities were incompatible, and a few weeks after Augusta Ada was born (December 10, 1815), the couple separated. Shortly afterward, rumors concerning Byron's previous affair with Augusta destroyed his reputation and social acceptability, forcing him to take up permanent residence on the Continent. However, subsequent letters and much of his poetry show tender concern for the child he never saw again. He died at 36, eight years after her birth.

Lady Byron resolved to bring up her daughter (now called Ada, for obvious reasons) to be as unlike Byron as possibly. Setting herself up as a paragon while hinting of unspeakable evil in her husband's character, she encouraged Ada's mathematical talent but discouraged any traits that reminded her of Byron.

When Ada was about 14, she suffered a severe paralytic illness -- possibly of psychosomatic origin. Unable to walk for almost three years, she pursued the mathematical studies she loved and became an accomplished musician and linguist. Like most young ladies of her social class, she was taught by tutors -- some of whom were eminent scientists and mathematicians, such as Augustus De Morgan, a family friend.

At 19, Ada married William King (created Lord Lovelace three years later). Her mother became the dominant and domineering figure in the marriage, forming a kind of ruling partnership with Ada's husband -- the covert reason being that Ada -- whose mercurial Byronic temperament they wished to control -- must be kept busy and out of mischief. Together they freed Ada from many of the usual feminine social and family responsibilities so that she would have time to carve out a mathematical and scientific career; but, tragically, the countess's health never allowed her to progress as far as she would have liked.

After the birth of her third child, and about the time her notes on the Menabrea paper were published (when she was 29), she began to suffer both a physical and mental breakdown. Because she was subject to frequent digestive and breathing problems, her doctor advised her to use various dangerous combinations of brandy, wine, beer, opium, and morphine, which led to serious personality disorders, including delusions to the effect that her mind -- admittedly brilliant -- could comprehend the secrets of the universe and make her God's prophet on Earth.

After some years, she came to recognize that drugs were disastrous to her equilibrium and managed to shake off the addition through sheer will power -- only to fall victim to a new obsession: horse race gambling. Since highborn ladies did not deal directly with bookmakers, she used a servant and Babbage as go-betweens. Unbeknownst to Babbage at first, she ran into catastrophic debt, pawned family jewels, and became the target of blackmailers who threatened public exposure. Her husband, when he learned of her difficulties, stood by her; but consequent family squabbles among Ada, Lord Lovelace, and Ada's mother brought permanent estrangement on all sides.

To add to her torment, Ada was suffering from internal cancer, to which she succumbed in 1852 at the age of 36. She was buried, at her request, beside Lord Byron in the Byron family vault. If there is one bright spot in the darkness of her last years, it is that she had finally come to understand and accept her own identity, and that of the father she had been taught to despise.

The Real Ada; Countess of Lovelace by Carol L. James and Duncan E. Morrill (AdaIC Flyer H019-1190d)