Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace

theodp writes: To commemorate the 200th birthday of Ada Lovelace, Google's CS Education in Media Program partnered with YouTube Kids on Happy Birthday Ada! for Computer Science Education Week. For those seeking (much!) more information on The Enchantress of Numbers, Stephen Wolfram has penned a pretty epic blog post, Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace. "Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today," Wolfram begins. "To some she is a great hero in the history of computing; to others an overestimated minor figure. I've been curious for a long time what the real story is. And in preparation for her bicentennial, I decided to try to solve what for me has always been the 'mystery of Ada'." If you're not up for the full 12,000+ word read, skip to "The Final Story" for the TL;DR summary.

Comments

Stephen Wolfram's Blog

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart as the guy undoubtedly is, I think it has already been established that Wolfram's greatest talent is for self promotion. I would really rather not see his blog become one of Slashdot's go-to sources for slow-news-day stories. He gets quite enough publicity all by himself without Slashdot slapping his every bloggy utterance on the front page.

Re:Stephen Wolfram's Blog

[shoor]

This is one of those times when I actually RTFMed.
I agree there was self-promotion, but Wolfram has the chops to really digest and understand the Victorian era style and necessarily rough first casting of novel ideas. Plugging through all that documentation couldn't have been easy, and it's not like the guy doesn't have other things to do, so he deserves some kudos in my opinion.
Wolfram may have been serving himself, but he also served Ada and Charles Babbage, and that makes it worth reading.

Re:Hero?

[Anonymous Coward]

To some she is a great hero in the history of computing

All respect to women, programmers, engineers, and human-beings in general notwithstanding, don't you need to have undertaken something dangerous to qualify for the term "hero"? Especially "great hero"?

The dictionary definition mentions "exceptional courage and nobility and strength"...

The dictionary definition does not specifically say one must exhibit all three characteristics to be e hero. Strength of character. Strength of the mind. Courage to take a path less travelled. Courage to explore a field of knowledge in which you might not represent to majority. There are plenty of interpretations. It is not restricted to brutality on the battlefield nor the sports venue.

Re:Hero?

[mi]

And these travails of a sexually confused person have what to do with Ada Lovelace? You do know, she happily married and had three children?

Re:Hero?

[mi]

And you're overlooking important hints about what was really going on here. She was admired for her "brilliant mind" not just as a woman, but because she was presented at Court.

False. She was presented at Court, because she was a girl of noble birth coming of age — all such teenagers were presented at Court, whether they were dumb or smart, or strong or weak.

there were still severe restrictions even on noblewomen

She fought none of these restrictions and so is no "hero" on that account. Her intellectual pursuits do her credit, but, because these required no risks are not signs of any heroism either.

wealthy aristocratic women did have freedom to pursue intellectual pursuits to some extent

Every woman in 19th century had the necessary freedoms for such pursuits. Being wealthy and well-connected provided the means, but not the freedoms.

But your response is equally nonsensical in acting like "Victorian Britain" wasn't that bad for women.

You just agreed, that it was not as bad as the GGP made it appear, and yet, you are calling my response equally nonsensical? Wow...

women of the lower and middle classes, they certainly wouldn't have had the option to do anything like this

Not because they lacked freedoms — only because they didn't have the wealth. A very important distinction, when judging a culture.