Latest / Ridiculous History / Ada Lovelace, Part One: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Became a Tech Visionary

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Ada Lovelace, Part One: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Became a Tech Visionary · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in, UH, and a very very
0:35
Speaker 1: special thanks to not just our usual super producer Max Williams,
0:40
Speaker 1: but to our guest super producer, the one and only
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Speaker 1: give it up for in folks, loll Brilliante. Also along
0:49
Speaker 1: with you, Noel, I'm I'm appointing the dream team of
0:53
Speaker 1: Noel and Lowell as officially the most patient people I've
0:56
Speaker 1: hung out with today. My name is Ben. I hey
0:59
Speaker 1: try trapic and I need to learn how to not
1:02
Speaker 1: need a phone. Well you know, I think that uh,
1:05
Speaker 1: that ship has sailed, my friend, thanks to the subject
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Speaker 1: of today's episode. Well in some part of the subject
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Speaker 1: of today's episode, Ada Lovelace. No, that's not a porn
1:16
Speaker 1: star from from the nineteen seventies. It is, in fact
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Speaker 1: one of the most important forces in mathematics and science
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Speaker 1: and modern computing UH to this day. Um who also
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Speaker 1: happened to be the daughter of a very body poet
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Speaker 1: and lothario note known as Lord Byron Um. I I
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Speaker 1: did not know that at all. I knew about Ada Lovelace.
1:38
Speaker 1: I did not know she was related to this notorious Letch.
1:43
Speaker 1: So yes, yes, just an interesting story and just because
1:48
Speaker 1: I'm coming in hot Uh no, well, I want to
1:51
Speaker 1: explain to everybody what what's going on here. So we
1:56
Speaker 1: were supposed to record earlier today, but one genius who
2:01
Speaker 1: I will name because it was me, left their phone
2:04
Speaker 1: in a rideshare service half of this, and I drove
2:10
Speaker 1: all the way out to a distant place to go
2:13
Speaker 1: pick up this phone and couldn't find it because I
2:16
Speaker 1: printed out a map and I was driving back and
2:18
Speaker 1: I was thinking, oh, no, I'm making the gang late
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Speaker 1: for recording. How did we become so reliant on these things?
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Speaker 1: And the whole time this story was kicking in my head,
2:27
Speaker 1: as you know, stopping and going. And we do owe
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Speaker 1: a lot, not just to Lord Byron his love life aside,
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Speaker 1: but to Augusta Aida King, the Countess of Lovelace, or
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Speaker 1: Augusta Ada Byron December ten, eighteen fifteen. We know her today,
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Speaker 1: as you said, as simply Ada Lovelace. She is widely
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Speaker 1: regarded as the world's first computer programmer, which means she's
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Speaker 1: the first person to take the ideas or the the
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Speaker 1: abilities the potential of computational machines and combined them with
3:04
Speaker 1: the potential of symbolic logic. And you can find so
3:09
Speaker 1: much great writing from her. We were inspired by a
3:12
Speaker 1: wonderful article from Wired. We pulled some stuff from the
3:15
Speaker 1: New Yorker, the Smithsonian, all the hits, all the hits.
3:19
Speaker 1: But no, I love that we're starting by talking a
3:22
Speaker 1: little bit about her old her old man, because this
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Speaker 1: guy turns out had somewhat reluctantly married aid as mom.
3:34
Speaker 1: Isn't that correct? Yeah, that's right. Um, I don't know,
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Speaker 1: he didn't really have a whole on common with his bride,
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Speaker 1: Annabella Millbank. Um. She was kind of a little more
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Speaker 1: of a bookish type. And you know, Byron he was
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Speaker 1: a poet, but that didn't make him like a bookworm exactly.
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Speaker 1: I mean, he was out carousing. I think he had
3:53
Speaker 1: like a pet bear. He was described as being a
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Speaker 1: dangerous fellow to know, uh, just in general, like kind
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Speaker 1: of had a reputation, even though his poetry was uh
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Speaker 1: and it is quite quite beautiful, and his daughter would
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Speaker 1: ultimately become fascinated by it. Despite her father's reputation. But
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Speaker 1: her mother, um was really really into mathematics, and she
4:16
Speaker 1: came from the upper crust as well and had an
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Speaker 1: upper class education, which is, you know, one of the
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Speaker 1: benefits to yet when you come from a super super
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Speaker 1: wealthy family. Uh. Byron was hesitant to marry her, not
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Speaker 1: only because maybe they didn't quite see eyed in terms
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Speaker 1: of their lifestyle, but he just wasn't really romantically attracted
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Speaker 1: to her. Um. He kind of looked at her as
4:38
Speaker 1: almost like a bullwark, like you know, like a barrier
4:42
Speaker 1: kind of against his own. That was described as dangerous
4:46
Speaker 1: passion um and that's very true. He was known to
4:51
Speaker 1: be dangerously passionate um. And he apparently was known to
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Speaker 1: carry on um romantic quite willy nilly with both men
5:03
Speaker 1: and women. Round drown round, round, I get around. Yeah. Yeah,
5:08
Speaker 1: he's an original beach boy there. Uh. He also he
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Speaker 1: had many many mistresses. He had been called mad, bad
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Speaker 1: and dangerous to know, and he wasn't initially cool at
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Speaker 1: all with his daughter from the jump. Uh. He He
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Speaker 1: had refused, by the way, to acknowledge one child that
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Speaker 1: he had already had and had the kid instead sent
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Speaker 1: away to a convent in Italy, where the poor type
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Speaker 1: died at five years old. But when Adah was born
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Speaker 1: reportedly the first words that Lord Byron said to her were, oh,
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Speaker 1: what an implement of torture. I have a quiet in
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Speaker 1: you which is not quite I love you. And her
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Speaker 1: first words that turned out was maths Um, that's not
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Speaker 1: necessarily true. But she was his only legitimate child. And that,
6:02
Speaker 1: by the way, fun a little little sub fact. Uh.
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Speaker 1: Claire Claremont, which is a great name, by the way,
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Speaker 1: who was the daughter he had from an illegitimate affair,
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Speaker 1: was also the sub sister of Mary Shelley, so very
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Speaker 1: interesting literary connections all around. Definitely fared better than her sister, um,
6:19
Speaker 1: who you know was kind of shuttled off to that
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Speaker 1: convent like you mentioned. Um. He was not stoked about it,
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Speaker 1: Lord Byron, Um. But he deferred largely to her mother
6:32
Speaker 1: in the kind of education she would receive. Uh. He
6:35
Speaker 1: told his wife that it was his intention to keep
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Speaker 1: having affairs um with mistresses uh and do his thing.
6:43
Speaker 1: And three days later he wrote his wife a letter
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Speaker 1: telling her to find a good time that would be
6:50
Speaker 1: convenient for she and his daughter to leave. Yeah, he says,
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Speaker 1: the child will of course accompany you, as certainly proper.
7:01
Speaker 1: That child must be the care of the woman whilst
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Speaker 1: I carouse and drink my fine wines. Um. Yeah, he
7:11
Speaker 1: was kind of a jerk. Uh, definitely remembered for this
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Speaker 1: beautiful poetry, but was clearly kind of a garbage person. Um. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: So Annabella took this, you know, with this in the
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Speaker 1: spirit that it was intended. She definitely read the room
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Speaker 1: and decided to seeking annulment or separation rather, and uh
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Speaker 1: employed attorneys, which she could afford, thankfully, because she was
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Speaker 1: independently wealthy, had nothing to do with her marriage to him,
7:37
Speaker 1: which is a good thing. Um. And his attorney sent
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Speaker 1: notice to Lord Byron saying that Lady Byron positively, oh
7:45
Speaker 1: this is actually the quote from the letter. Lady b
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Speaker 1: positively affirmed that she has not at any time spread
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Speaker 1: reports injurious to Lord Byron's character. Uh. He was doing
7:56
Speaker 1: that plenty well himself, it would seem yeah yeah, and
8:05
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And we know that there was this implication
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Speaker 1: that unless Lord Byron complied with her whiskers, she might
8:12
Speaker 1: actually start talking. So now you've got to comply if
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Speaker 1: you are Lord Byron. So he started thinking of her,
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Speaker 1: and this is something that sadly people can relate to
8:25
Speaker 1: in the modern day. You ever meet those folks who
8:28
Speaker 1: are like, oh my ex wife for my ex husband
8:31
Speaker 1: or Max, remember how I hate them. This is kind
8:34
Speaker 1: of where Lord Byron ended up. He started calling her
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Speaker 1: a mathematical media, and then he later made fun of
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Speaker 1: her in his poetry, specifically his epic poem don One,
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Speaker 1: where he says her favorite science was the mathematical She
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Speaker 1: was a walking calculation. It sounds like he might be
8:54
Speaker 1: talking about Ada, but she never really like met her
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Speaker 1: father when she was old enough to talk to him,
9:00
Speaker 1: and he died so young, dude. He passed away when
9:03
Speaker 1: he was thirty six in Greece. Ata was eight, and
9:07
Speaker 1: on his deathbed he um In his deathbed, he seemed
9:11
Speaker 1: to have a change of heart and he was saying,
9:14
Speaker 1: you know, I wish I could have seen her give
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Speaker 1: her my blessing. Although you know he also had eight
9:20
Speaker 1: years to figure that out. Yeah, it's not that it
9:24
Speaker 1: didn't really add that. It doesn't really ring true. When
9:27
Speaker 1: he's you know, and his with his dying, dying breath,
9:30
Speaker 1: he's like, you know what, I made some mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. Yeah.
9:36
Speaker 1: So Lady Byron is rightly just traumatized by this, and
9:41
Speaker 1: she makes a vow to herself, and she says, I
9:45
Speaker 1: Am not going to let my daughter become like her father.
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Speaker 1: So I've got to figure out a way to make
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Speaker 1: her not this just philandering poet poetests and get it. Yeah,
9:58
Speaker 1: the apple doesn't fall too far from the treat. Maybe
10:01
Speaker 1: it depends nature or nurture. Uh. They weren't really sure
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Speaker 1: yet in those days, so she wasn't gonna take any chances.
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Speaker 1: You know. Well, they definitely lived a privileged life in
10:13
Speaker 1: a country estate where she was you know, tended to
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Speaker 1: by governesses and had tutors and all that. She also
10:19
Speaker 1: had a pet cat named Mrs puff Um. It does
10:22
Speaker 1: say in the Wired article in the research that we
10:24
Speaker 1: found that it was a rented house, uh, which makes
10:27
Speaker 1: me think that maybe they were like on more like
10:29
Speaker 1: in the upper crust world, maybe more in the middle crust,
10:32
Speaker 1: you know, of the upper crust. Um. But it did
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Speaker 1: lead to an excellent education for Ada, and she took
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Speaker 1: to it beautifully. Um. She you know, her mom really
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Speaker 1: was genuinely concerned. And it actually is I believe, uh
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Speaker 1: conjectured by historians that Lord Byron was in fact quite mad.
10:52
Speaker 1: He was, uh, he was not well, um in terms
10:55
Speaker 1: of you know, some form of sexual addiction or you know,
11:00
Speaker 1: bipolar person. I mean, I don't know. I'm not gonna
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Speaker 1: like try to I'm not armchair psychiatrist here, but it
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Speaker 1: does seem like the guy that had a few screws loose.
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Speaker 1: And she was aware of this and did not want
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Speaker 1: that to be inherited by or was worried that maybe
11:12
Speaker 1: it had been inherited. So she was gonna fight tooth
11:15
Speaker 1: and nail to keep her from becoming her father, like
11:17
Speaker 1: you said, um, And in her mind, the education was
11:20
Speaker 1: the path toward that life for her. So she was enrolled,
11:25
Speaker 1: um in this really really intense homeschooling program. She covered
11:29
Speaker 1: most of the basics of you know, any education that
11:33
Speaker 1: with children with that kind of access would get, like
11:35
Speaker 1: language and science and all that. But her mom was
11:39
Speaker 1: a big fan of math, and so she really pushed
11:42
Speaker 1: her daughter into mathematics, which would have been, while not
11:45
Speaker 1: unheard of, a little more rare for a young woman
11:49
Speaker 1: to to focus on, you know, the study of of
11:51
Speaker 1: of logic and reason in mathematics, especially in the eighteen
11:55
Speaker 1: hundreds in England. And she was in this game from
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Speaker 1: the age of four. She's very very quick study, a
12:06
Speaker 1: smart student, when she was only twelve years old, she
12:10
Speaker 1: decided that she wanted to try to fly. Unlike that
12:14
Speaker 1: alchemist John Damian that we mentioned earlier, she didn't yeah,
12:19
Speaker 1: she had immediately strapped chicken feathers to herself and jump
12:22
Speaker 1: off a building. She said, okay, well, let me let
12:25
Speaker 1: me learn from the pros who were the flying pros
12:28
Speaker 1: I'm aware of, And she started looking at birds. She
12:31
Speaker 1: became a birdwatcher, and she was thinking, okay, how do
12:35
Speaker 1: birds fly? Could I build something that could help me fly?
12:38
Speaker 1: Could I build wings? So she worked with feathers, paper,
12:42
Speaker 1: and silk, and according to her biographer Betty Alexandre Toole,
12:49
Speaker 1: this is her research began in eight is and she
12:54
Speaker 1: went on to write an illustrated guide about her research
12:58
Speaker 1: called fly Ology, which is just like the sweetest, most
13:02
Speaker 1: impressive thing. It's durable, uh, and then it's just to
13:04
Speaker 1: be clear too. She wrote and illustrated that book herself.
13:08
Speaker 1: Definitely had some pretty broad talents. Sure. Her mom a
13:12
Speaker 1: let her about this, saying, I've got a scheme to
13:15
Speaker 1: make a thing in the form of a horse with
13:17
Speaker 1: a steam engine on the inside, so contrived as to
13:21
Speaker 1: move an immense pair of wings fixed on the outside
13:24
Speaker 1: of the horse in such a manner as to carry
13:26
Speaker 1: it up into the air while a person sits on
13:28
Speaker 1: his back. Okay, first of all, this is basically like
13:31
Speaker 1: a super nerdy, high functioning version of a unicorn or
13:35
Speaker 1: a pegasus. So she's like a little girl, and she's
13:37
Speaker 1: combining like the kind of dreams and daydreams that little
13:41
Speaker 1: girls have, you know, um stereotypically with a massive intellect
13:46
Speaker 1: and creating like a steam powered kind of steampunk unicorn
13:51
Speaker 1: pegasus situation. I think that's pretty awesome. Yeah, And her
13:55
Speaker 1: mother is if if we can get a beep there,
13:59
Speaker 1: little Her mother is terrified because this is too fanciful,
14:03
Speaker 1: and she's like, I'm throwing all this money out the
14:06
Speaker 1: window to make sure that you have a mindset based
14:11
Speaker 1: in logic and you are a rational thinker. I don't
14:15
Speaker 1: want to be at all crazy like your dad. Uh.
14:18
Speaker 1: And Aida doesn't quite agree, because she feels that this
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Speaker 1: poetic stuff that her imagination is a big part of
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Speaker 1: who she is. She's also a teenager at this point
14:31
Speaker 1: and fast forwarded and she says in a letter to
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Speaker 1: her mother, you will not concede me philosophical poetry invert
14:38
Speaker 1: the order, will you give me poetical philosophy poetical science?
14:43
Speaker 1: And uh, this is is strange because this new iteration
14:48
Speaker 1: of that same tension between her parents originally is a
14:53
Speaker 1: big part of what led Aida Lovelace to become a
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Speaker 1: pioneer of what you could call poetical science. And and
15:03
Speaker 1: people have written about this and imagine these moments of
15:08
Speaker 1: her early life in depth, and there are there are
15:10
Speaker 1: a lot of good things to check out in that regard. Uh,
15:13
Speaker 1: we would like to recommend a work, a nonfiction work
15:17
Speaker 1: called The Innovators How a group of hackers, geniuses and
15:20
Speaker 1: geeks created the Digital Revolution. In this book which talks
15:24
Speaker 1: about a lost a lot of things and a lot
15:26
Speaker 1: of players Walter Isaacs, and the author profiles Ada Lovelace
15:31
Speaker 1: at the opening chapter, which should let you know how
15:33
Speaker 1: important she is to you today. Totally. There's also a
15:37
Speaker 1: really good um uh talk that I watched on YouTube
15:41
Speaker 1: on the Computer History Museum YouTube channel by co authors
15:45
Speaker 1: of Ada Lovelace, The Making of a Computer Scientists. The
15:48
Speaker 1: names are Ursula Martin and Adrian Rice and believe they
15:51
Speaker 1: both had are associated with Oxford. But I'm really really
15:54
Speaker 1: interesting deep dive. They have the Ada Lovelace Archives at
15:58
Speaker 1: housed at Oxford, So I had like incredible access to
16:01
Speaker 1: all these letters and things that we're talking about. Um
16:03
Speaker 1: but yeah, but poetical science, that's not really a thing.
16:07
Speaker 1: It's more of a concept that she more or less invented. Uh.
16:11
Speaker 1: And it makes sense because she is you can tell
16:13
Speaker 1: from the start even with that, I'm making a joke
16:16
Speaker 1: about the whole Pegasus thing about how it's like the
16:18
Speaker 1: kind of whimsical thinking of like a child combined with
16:22
Speaker 1: this like huge massive intellect. But it's ultimately super forward
16:28
Speaker 1: thinking and like everything that she conceives of so ahead
16:31
Speaker 1: of its time, like she is incredibly pressing it. So
16:36
Speaker 1: all of this continues exponentially, much like a computer technology.
16:41
Speaker 1: And in that book you mentioned, Been the Innovators, um
16:45
Speaker 1: Isaacson writes this wonderful kind of crystallization of like her
16:49
Speaker 1: whole vibe. Um Ada had inherited her father's romantic spirit,
16:53
Speaker 1: a trait that her mother tried to temper by having
16:55
Speaker 1: her tortured tortured by having her tutored in mathematics. The
17:00
Speaker 1: combination produced in Ada a love for what she took
17:03
Speaker 1: to calling poetical science, which linked her rebellious imagination to
17:06
Speaker 1: her enchantment with numbers. For many, including her father, the
17:10
Speaker 1: rarefied sensibilities of the Romantic era clashed with the techno
17:14
Speaker 1: excitement of the Industrial Revolution, but Ada was comfortable at
17:18
Speaker 1: the intersection of both eras, I think that's the key.
17:21
Speaker 1: I love that sentence. Um. So she finds her niche.
17:26
Speaker 1: And it's not really even a niche that exists yet,
17:30
Speaker 1: because the Industrial Revolution is still a relatively new thing
17:34
Speaker 1: in terms of, like, you know, overall history. But on
17:36
Speaker 1: January one, she proposed this question about the nature of imagination. Um.
17:43
Speaker 1: And she decides that it's two things. One the combining
17:48
Speaker 1: faculty that seizes points in common between subjects having no
17:53
Speaker 1: apparent connection, and imagination is the discovering faculty. Pre eminently,
17:59
Speaker 1: it is that which of traits into the unseen worlds
18:01
Speaker 1: around us, the worlds of science. UM. Yeah, beautiful, I'd
18:06
Speaker 1: like to talk about that. Yeah, it's a step back here.
18:09
Speaker 1: So this is something what I find so inspiring about
18:13
Speaker 1: this is the this is the kind of thinking that
18:16
Speaker 1: a lot of people have practiced, or a lot of
18:20
Speaker 1: people have It's a route to people have gone down
18:22
Speaker 1: cognitively in the past. But haven't always written about, and
18:26
Speaker 1: they've just sort of restricted it at times to their
18:29
Speaker 1: their musings, or, if you want to be a little
18:31
Speaker 1: more lord Byron about it, their flights of fancy. I
18:35
Speaker 1: would argue, this is one guy talking on the internet.
18:39
Speaker 1: But I would argue that this represents a new form
18:44
Speaker 1: of a very ancient thing, because the early days of
18:47
Speaker 1: science were uh inextricably rooted in spirituality, right, the early
18:54
Speaker 1: centers of learning were also themselves spiritual centers. And so
18:58
Speaker 1: now what she's doing is um maybe a little more
19:02
Speaker 1: secular version, and she's saying, Hey, these two things which
19:06
Speaker 1: we might today call qualitative and quantitative forms of knowledge,
19:11
Speaker 1: they're not so different, and together perhaps they can vultron
19:14
Speaker 1: up into more than the some of their parts. And this,
19:19
Speaker 1: as you said, is a pretty freaky, unfamiliar idea for
19:24
Speaker 1: a lot of people that she's interacting with at the time,
19:27
Speaker 1: except for one person she meets who changes her life
19:32
Speaker 1: and therefore ridiculous historians, changes the lives of everyone who
19:37
Speaker 1: is listening to the show today. His name Charles Babbage,
19:43
Speaker 1: his gig, his bag. He is renowned mathematician. He meets
19:48
Speaker 1: aid Up on June five three. She's at this wild party.
19:54
Speaker 1: It's chock full of London's socialites, the move ers and
20:00
Speaker 1: the shakers. And she's about seventeen years old making her debut,
20:05
Speaker 1: and Babbage is much older. He's in his forties. He
20:10
Speaker 1: is a widower, and he is telling everybody he can
20:15
Speaker 1: buttonhole like anyone will listen to him. He's saying, let
20:19
Speaker 1: me tell you about this idea I have. It's called
20:21
Speaker 1: the Difference Machine, which is also a side note. Babbage
20:24
Speaker 1: didn't know this. It's the name of an underground hip
20:26
Speaker 1: hop group in Atlanta. That's quite good. So if you're
20:29
Speaker 1: like in the ground hip hop, check out Difference Machine. Yeah,
20:31
Speaker 1: they're cool, dudes, they are. I don't know. One of
20:33
Speaker 1: the guys that makes the beats for him, gauge what
20:41
Speaker 1: his difference machine is is essentially, it's a tower of wheels,
20:46
Speaker 1: numbered wheels, and you can turn a handle and it'll
20:50
Speaker 1: do math for you. It'll do calculations. Yeah, I mean,
20:54
Speaker 1: it's it's it's essentially a super bespoke, glorified adding machine.
21:01
Speaker 1: That's what it's called the difference machine, right, the difference
21:03
Speaker 1: It literally is a mechanical calculator. It does more elaborate
21:09
Speaker 1: math than just adding and subtracting and doing differences. I
21:12
Speaker 1: think it you know, maybe I don't know if it
21:14
Speaker 1: would do calculus, but it definitely not existed. And that
21:17
Speaker 1: was the idea was that it could do. It was
21:18
Speaker 1: more like a graphic calculator maybe, but probably you couldn't
21:22
Speaker 1: play snake on it. Uh. It never actually got built,
21:24
Speaker 1: and he was obviously pitching this idea amongst these movers
21:28
Speaker 1: and shakers to try to get funding to build the thing,
21:31
Speaker 1: but he ultimately never quite went on to build the
21:33
Speaker 1: full uh difference machine. I think he did like a
21:36
Speaker 1: test version of it that was much smaller, Um. But
21:39
Speaker 1: she was super into it. She loved the poetical sensibilities
21:43
Speaker 1: of it all. Um. She it could be argued, kind
21:48
Speaker 1: of got it even more than the inventor himself. One
21:51
Speaker 1: of her friends said of this miss Byron Young as
21:53
Speaker 1: she was understood it's working and saw the great beauty
21:56
Speaker 1: of the invention. And Isaacson in that book talks about
21:59
Speaker 1: how important that moment was when she met Babbage um
22:03
Speaker 1: in her life. And also he said, Ben, the trajectory
22:06
Speaker 1: of computers and these little things we carry around in
22:10
Speaker 1: our pockets that we were allowed on so much to
22:12
Speaker 1: get us from point A to point B and to
22:14
Speaker 1: you know, play snake on and like google things. Um.
22:17
Speaker 1: But her love of poetry and math, according to isaacson
22:21
Speaker 1: Um primed her to see beauty in a computing machine. Um,
22:25
Speaker 1: which is crazy. It's like no one else. Apparently it
22:28
Speaker 1: was regarded as a bit of a gimmick by people
22:31
Speaker 1: that he was pitching it too at the party, like
22:33
Speaker 1: they weren't into it. They because they couldn't see it.
22:35
Speaker 1: They could they only saw it for what it was,
22:37
Speaker 1: which was something that already existed in the form of
22:40
Speaker 1: like an abacus or like pen and paper, right, like
22:42
Speaker 1: why why I need this machine? Would have been huge,
22:45
Speaker 1: like what forty ft wide and fifteen feet tall something
22:50
Speaker 1: along those lines. Yeah, it would be a different innovation
22:55
Speaker 1: on the way, but that's what they what he was envisioning,
22:58
Speaker 1: and those were the materials of the I'm and obviously
23:02
Speaker 1: a tow sees something more here. She is thinking big,
23:07
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, kind of like a Hollywood
23:10
Speaker 1: producer people brainstorming in a writer's room. And she thinks,
23:15
Speaker 1: this is the first step, one of the biggest steps
23:19
Speaker 1: I can make in this poetical science. I've been dreaming
23:23
Speaker 1: about for so long. I need to get this Babbage
23:27
Speaker 1: guy to work with me. I need to get him
23:29
Speaker 1: to teach me. And so she tries to convince him
23:34
Speaker 1: by writing him a letter. And here's just a piece
23:37
Speaker 1: of what she says. You can read it at brain
23:39
Speaker 1: pickings dot org. She says, I have a peculiar way
23:42
Speaker 1: of learning, and I think it must be a peculiar
23:44
Speaker 1: man to teach me successfully. You know, I reckon me conceded,
23:48
Speaker 1: but I believe I have the power of going just
23:50
Speaker 1: as far as I like in such pursuits. And where
23:52
Speaker 1: there is so decided a taste I should almost say
23:55
Speaker 1: a passion as I have for them, I question if
23:58
Speaker 1: there is not always some poor shouldn't have natural genius.
24:02
Speaker 1: Even what that means in the parlance of these our
24:06
Speaker 1: times is look, I'm special. I think you got something too.
24:13
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but
24:16
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty smart cookie. I think you're a smart cookie.
24:20
Speaker 1: Let's be a smart set of cookies. This Babbage is sold,
24:24
Speaker 1: and they write correspondencies to each other for years and
24:29
Speaker 1: years after this, and he talks about her plan. He
24:32
Speaker 1: talks about his plans that the stuff he wants to
24:35
Speaker 1: innovate the stuff he wants to build, and she talks
24:38
Speaker 1: to him about her ambition. Uh, and Babbage agrees with her.
24:44
Speaker 1: It turns into like this, you ever have those times, Noel, Well,
24:48
Speaker 1: we're hanging out with your buds and sometimes you might
24:51
Speaker 1: have a couple of beers and they just are big
24:53
Speaker 1: up in each other and it's like, no, dude, you're
24:55
Speaker 1: the man. No, you're the you know you're awesome. You're awesome.
24:59
Speaker 1: They kind to start doing this, and at one eight
25:02
Speaker 1: thirty nine that big even says, despite the rampant massogyny
25:05
Speaker 1: of the age, I think you are so so good
25:09
Speaker 1: at math that no one should get in your way.
25:11
Speaker 1: That's that we're translating. He really said, I think you'll tasteful.
25:15
Speaker 1: Mathematics is so decided that it ought ought to be checked.
25:18
Speaker 1: But that's basically the same don't check herself lest she
25:22
Speaker 1: wrecked herself, um or yourself, because she was a force
25:26
Speaker 1: to be reckoned with my friend. Um. She did get
25:29
Speaker 1: married and started a family. Uh and you know, lived
25:33
Speaker 1: the domestic life for a little bit, but ultimately the
25:36
Speaker 1: siren call of mathematics was just too loud. Uh and
25:41
Speaker 1: uh and seductive for her to to stay away for
25:44
Speaker 1: too long. Um. She was, you know, kind of told
25:48
Speaker 1: by her mother to follow that kind of more conventional
25:52
Speaker 1: child rearing. Upper middle class UM model. Lady Byron at
25:58
Speaker 1: this point is one of the wealthiest women in all
26:00
Speaker 1: of Britain um and had a lot of influence and
26:03
Speaker 1: could ensure that Adah was able to do what she wanted. Um. So,
26:08
Speaker 1: in a thirty five, with her mom's approval, she married
26:12
Speaker 1: a not particularly intelligent, but but friendly enough young aristocrat
26:19
Speaker 1: by the name of Lord William King, who eventually became
26:24
Speaker 1: the Earl of Lovelace. I don't know love Lovelace what
26:27
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it? Um and uh he really loved
26:31
Speaker 1: Ada a lot. He also admired her smarts uh and
26:35
Speaker 1: remarked that she would would make a great general. He
26:39
Speaker 1: felt that she would was a good tactician. A lot
26:41
Speaker 1: of that is required to to be good at mathematics.
26:44
Speaker 1: You have to have some strategy solving puzzles in the like. Uh.
26:50
Speaker 1: So for the next several years, Um, she's mainly rearing kids,
26:56
Speaker 1: popping out babies. She's got three of them. Uh. And
26:59
Speaker 1: she's you know, she's managing a household you know the lady,
27:02
Speaker 1: the lady of the house. Literally it's center title. Um.
27:05
Speaker 1: She did a little bit of horseback riding. She she
27:07
Speaker 1: learned how to play the harp, uh, and continued um
27:10
Speaker 1: doing math. She really was getting into something called spherical trigonometry.
27:15
Speaker 1: I I, for one, was always quite bad at math
27:17
Speaker 1: and struggled just to even like get through college algebra,
27:20
Speaker 1: so never never took trigg. I don't think I did
27:23
Speaker 1: any calculus, but um, yeah, she was into all that stuff. Uh.
27:27
Speaker 1: And within a few months of the birth of her
27:29
Speaker 1: third kid in eighteen thirty nine, she decided it was
27:33
Speaker 1: time to get back on the horse, the math horse,
27:36
Speaker 1: and she had some support, I think from Lord William King.
27:41
Speaker 1: They had what I like to call the best relationship,
27:45
Speaker 1: not as in the best for them, but when I
27:47
Speaker 1: say a best relationship, I mean one person in the relationship,
27:51
Speaker 1: William King, was like, oh, Aida, you're the best. And
27:55
Speaker 1: the other person in the relationship, Ada Lovelace, was like, ah, Willie,
28:00
Speaker 1: trying your best. Yeah, you're you're you're What was it?
28:05
Speaker 1: One time a German speaker I was in a conversation
28:09
Speaker 1: with them and they called something I did severely adequate,
28:13
Speaker 1: which was like the most biggest burn. Yeah, you guys
28:17
Speaker 1: get it. I can tell by your faces. But well, no,
28:20
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, no matter what he did, how
28:23
Speaker 1: is he going to hold a candle to the Lord
28:26
Speaker 1: of Math? Right? You know what I mean? That she
28:29
Speaker 1: was clearly in love with Math. No, ma'am was going
28:33
Speaker 1: to satisfy that particular you know pursuit. All they could
28:37
Speaker 1: do was hope to uh ally and support this journey,
28:42
Speaker 1: right and to work together with this brilliant mind. We
28:46
Speaker 1: have decided before we recorded today that we were going
28:50
Speaker 1: to make this a two parter because you need to
28:53
Speaker 1: know the setup for AIDA's life to know uh to
28:57
Speaker 1: fully understand the gravity of what she's doing, in many ways,
29:02
Speaker 1: working against tremendous odds, given how people the way that
29:07
Speaker 1: academia thought of women at the time. So I think, no,
29:12
Speaker 1: what do you say we we give it a pause
29:14
Speaker 1: here and come back Thursday with where things get even crazier. Well, hey,
29:20
Speaker 1: this is a great place to pause, because you're right,
29:22
Speaker 1: things do start to heat up in a really interesting
29:24
Speaker 1: way with a new version of Babbage's machine that we
29:28
Speaker 1: talked about, and one that would ultimately really truly change
29:32
Speaker 1: the course of technology. And and and human history. UM.
29:36
Speaker 1: But we also wanted to take a minute to talk
29:38
Speaker 1: to our guest superproducer, Lowell Berlante, who is the producer, creator,
29:45
Speaker 1: and host of a podcast that very much deals with
29:48
Speaker 1: this exact kind of stuff. Uh, it's called Prodigy, Um, loll,
29:52
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about Prodigy and
29:54
Speaker 1: some of the topics that you're stoked about? Yeah, thanks
29:57
Speaker 1: for having me. So in two thousands and there was
30:00
Speaker 1: this big behaviorist movement with books like Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Um.
30:05
Speaker 1: The idea behind it was that genetics or nature basically
30:09
Speaker 1: just don't matter. But if genetics don't matter, does that
30:13
Speaker 1: mean that prodigies can be created? So the first three
30:17
Speaker 1: episodes of Prodigy covered are most up today understanding of
30:20
Speaker 1: where talent comes from. After that, it kind of just
30:23
Speaker 1: evolved into like any psychological topic I found interesting, UM,
30:27
Speaker 1: like lucid dreaming or narcissism or social engineering. UM. I
30:31
Speaker 1: have an episode coming out soon about ketamine therapy for PTSD.
30:36
Speaker 1: Totally fascinating stuff. What's your take on on this kind
30:40
Speaker 1: of nature versus nurture? This idea that Lovelace's mom was
30:44
Speaker 1: so worried that she was going to become like a
30:47
Speaker 1: spitting image of her father and so like, Yeah, obviously
30:49
Speaker 1: they were separated and so there was no nurture there
30:53
Speaker 1: from the father. But like in your studies and in
30:55
Speaker 1: some of the episodes you've done, have you found one
30:57
Speaker 1: or the other to be strong or stronger force and
31:00
Speaker 1: and how kids end up? Yeah, well, it really depends
31:04
Speaker 1: on who you ask. Obviously, trauma is incredibly powerful, but
31:09
Speaker 1: if you take that out of the equation, we do
31:11
Speaker 1: have some ways to measure the influence of nature versus
31:13
Speaker 1: nurture um. In fact, we've been doing it for decades UM,
31:17
Speaker 1: way before the DNA revolution, and we do it with
31:20
Speaker 1: twin studies. So identical twins have identical DNA. So cases
31:25
Speaker 1: where identical twins were separated at birth, we could measure
31:29
Speaker 1: their similarity to each other, their birth parents, and their
31:32
Speaker 1: adoptive parents, and they found that identical twins were at apart,
31:37
Speaker 1: shared more similarities with their birth parents. If you want
31:41
Speaker 1: to hear more about those studies, you can listen to
31:43
Speaker 1: my third episode the Source Code. Also, there's a documentary
31:46
Speaker 1: called Three Identical Strangers that's really good. Yeah, and I
31:50
Speaker 1: can't recommend Prodigy enough this is not me blow and
31:54
Speaker 1: smoke a little. I've I've told people about this stuff.
31:57
Speaker 1: You you and I have talked before, particularly about your
32:00
Speaker 1: episode on the UNI bomber Ted Kaczenski, which which I
32:04
Speaker 1: think I think would be fantastic. Not if it's a
32:08
Speaker 1: fantastic listen, um, especially if you're a fan of our
32:12
Speaker 1: other shows. Stuff they don't want you to know. Also,
32:15
Speaker 1: I didn't want to interrupt you guys, but I do
32:17
Speaker 1: have to step in. I don't think this show devolved
32:21
Speaker 1: into that. I think it evolved really really special. So
32:26
Speaker 1: so what we're gonna do is we're gonna come back
32:30
Speaker 1: with one and only guest super producer, Little Brilliante in
32:36
Speaker 1: part two of our episode on Ada Lovelace. In the meantime,
32:41
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you so much to all
32:44
Speaker 1: the hits, all all our friends and fan are felt
32:47
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians, Casey Pegram, thanks to Max Williams, Noel of course,
32:52
Speaker 1: thank you to you. Thanks to both of you guys
32:54
Speaker 1: for having my back. I totally forgot traffic was a thing. Yeah, well,
32:59
Speaker 1: I mean it's like you said, uh, we can thank
33:02
Speaker 1: slash curse people like Babbage and Aida Lovelace for you know,
33:08
Speaker 1: literally kind of depriving us of parts of our brains
33:12
Speaker 1: that used to do things like remember directions or like
33:14
Speaker 1: memorized maps or even just read maps. There's I mean,
33:17
Speaker 1: it's it's great. It's a double edged sword. Obviously, we
33:20
Speaker 1: work for the Internet and we love a lot about it,
33:23
Speaker 1: but technology really does when you start to lean on
33:27
Speaker 1: it a little too hard, it can kind of become
33:30
Speaker 1: a crutch, a weird crutch, or something that you know,
33:33
Speaker 1: makes you dumber while also giving you incredible access to
33:36
Speaker 1: information or it could make you, you know, weird. Increasingly
33:40
Speaker 1: into the age of cybernetics, what makes you a cyborg?
33:44
Speaker 1: Is it an implant in your brain or is it,
33:46
Speaker 1: you know, being attached to your phone? How much what's
33:49
Speaker 1: the line of relied on technology? A million percent? We're
33:52
Speaker 1: gonna definitely talk about that. In the episode two, Lovelace
33:55
Speaker 1: actually has a pretty awesome hot take about AI before
34:00
Speaker 1: it was even something everybody can see like she was,
34:04
Speaker 1: like I said, very very imprescient. Um. So yeah, thank
34:06
Speaker 1: you too, Ben. Looking forward to getting back um and
34:09
Speaker 1: tackling part two of Ada Lovelace. We'll see you next time, folks.
34:19
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
34:21
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
34:24
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.