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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

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A quick, not a turing test, but when one's talking

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to art people, you look up and you say, hm.

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All power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

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>> [LAUGH] >> It works.

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Fine, we're in the right area.

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That's very good.

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And you will immediately notice two things.

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Charles Babbage is smoking cigar, except of course it's not.

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It's kingdom Brunell.

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And tomorrow Sydney Pageo will tell us why he's smoking a cigar.

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And more to the purpose she'll tell us why Ada is smoking a pipe.

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>> [LAUGH] >> And you'll see about that.

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Now, there's a reason for that image,

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because I've attended the workshops yesterday, which are wonderful,

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and a wonderful range of speeches, and talks, and subjects.

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And somebody said to me, Ada is a hostess interdisciplinary.

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She brings all the disciplines together around her and

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it seems to be true and I've noticed that very much today.

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But I've also noticed another thing which is that there's

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been a tremendously tight concentration on Ada and Babbage and

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I want to open that up as a biographer just in the little time we've had.

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I hope many of you know this.

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Of course it's at number 10 Saint James's Square.

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It's where she was working for a lot of time when she

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was working with Babbage, although also in the country.

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I'm interested in the form of that.

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First of all, it's just pioneer of computing, of course it's nothing else.

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That's the tag line.

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It doesn't actually say the first programmer, but

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it does say computing, but it leaves a lot else.

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And I'm also interested by lived here.

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Where did she live?

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I don't mean the fact that they were a very wealthy family, and

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of course they had the kings publicists.

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They had houses in Siri and of course in Somerset.

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Ashley Kum, which will take us to courage in a minute.

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But what I mean more historically.

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She lives in that revolutionary,

40
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industrial revolutionary period.

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Men with the big boots, all right.

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And there's some very interesting both combination and

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conflict indicated in that image.

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But so she lives in that industrial world of the 1830s and

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40s, which I want to talk about.

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She also lives in something which I feel hasn't sufficiently been

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looked at for a moment.

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In the great tradition of women in science and women mathematicians,

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for example, Madame du Chatelet, a great friend of Voltaire,

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a fine mathematician who wrote a whole thesis on the nature of fire.

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In France, Sophie Germain, another fine mathematician.

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Mary Somerville, who I will talk about a bit more.

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And then Ada.

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And you could go on to for example, Maria Mitchell.

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The American astronomer, the first woman professor at Vassar

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who Ada mentions in her letters and we might come back to her.

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She also belongs, she lives in that tradition as well and

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that's very important to us.

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And finally, it's quite evident now,

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she lives now in a very important edition of setting up a model for women,

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and maybe particularly young women in science, int he STEM disciplines.

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And I wrote some time ago about Mary Wollstonecraft, and

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there's a wonderful essay by Virginia Woolf.

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Which concludes that her life was an experiment, and we see it still.

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She is living among us now, and

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there's a sense in which Ada Lovelace is exactly what is happening now.

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She's living and important to us now because of what she represents,

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and this is partly what I want to explore by widening the focus

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a little bit away from Babbage.

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There's a wonderful remark that Lord Byron,

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who never knew his daughter, of course.

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Tragic, never knew her.

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He wrote in an early letter, there's these two lines,

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I just love them, says, is the girl imaginative?

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Is she passionate?

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I hope the gods have made her anything save poetical.

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[LAUGH] It is enough to have one such fool in the family, a very byronic joke.

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But that's interesting and we'll come back to that.

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And then a letter that Ada wrote from this address, from

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Thames and James's Square when she was 25, March in 41, to her mother who's in Paris.

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Instant a connection which hasn't been made by Ada's frequently going over

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to France.

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And she knows What work in Science is being done in France and

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also in fact in Germany but we'll come back to that.

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Here's this wonderful letter, just again two lines.

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Dearest Mama, pray to find out all you can for

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me about everything curious mysterious, marvelous,

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electrical, etc., etc., etc.

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Be my wonder and mystery hunter.

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And that seems to me something wonderful about Ada.

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And that quality of exuberance, which if you read her letters.

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People saying mania, my God, I've worked on Coager's private journals and

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letters, and Ada, very calm person.

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>> [LAUGH] >> And I also have to tell you the young

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Shelley, the young atheist Shelley, his letters wild, wild.

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So there's a very interesting gender issue here.

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Maybe a young woman is not allowed to write letters certainly.

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But she is now.

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She is among us in the living.

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So that sense of her exuberance, it's tremendously strong to me and

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one of the reasons I've been drawn to her as a subject.

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Now, we've seen these images and

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I want to set up something a little bit provocative here.

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Just that's the 1835, the one on the right,

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which is really when she was being presented at court.

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And in fact, we know from her letters she didn't like this image.

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It had partly been organized by her mother to give the profile, the Byron profile.

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But we know what she said is, my jaw in that picture is long enough to have

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the word mathematics written right the way down it.

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[LAUGH] It's very interesting that, but there you are.

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You could say that's the cool mathematical image.

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And then on the right, little bit later, this is a costume that she put on because

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at the time that Lord Lovelace was made a count, and so it was her countess costume.

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It's always struck me as sort of wild and eccentric, and we finally find out that

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she looked at this picture, and she thoroughly disapproved of it.

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She says, it's stiff and in a most extravagant fashion,

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which is putting it mildly, I think.

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But those two images, why I've put them up is because

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they operate a sense of something opposed in her nature.

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As it were the cooler mathematician.

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And the wild poetical.

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And I think when you study her,

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the whole point of Ada is that she combines these in a way.

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So that's a force opposition.

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And you could do an elegant dissertation saying that represents a divide between

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the two cultures.

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You could do a dissertation on that.

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I want to look at this in a different way.

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Now as a biographer, we have the real biographer.

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Julia Marcus is going to talk to us tomorrow.

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And we have Miranda Seymour here, who is writing a biography.

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And I can tell you as a biography.

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When you look over Ada's life, it is fantastically ranging.

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Talk about exuberance.

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I made a list of what are the things, starting at home, I would,

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her childhood, I'm going to come back to this, quite extraordinary.

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Her mother, remember, was an expert in childhood care and education,

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a very dangerous thing to be.

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Then Ada, on the subject of riding, waltzing,

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skating, harp playing three hours a day, and then the piano.

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Also, there's some hint about billiards.

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And there's even a story of her going round and

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round a table playing a fiddle as she goes round and round the billiard table.

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Sea bathing, Ada on sea bathing.

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One of the places she goes to is Brighton, partly to get better,

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partly because it's very fashionable.

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And there's a wonderful Ada note on swimming and swimming costumes, all right?

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Now Ada describes most of the women there are wearing outfits with big and

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bustles round here.

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Very protective, and very proper.

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And she says there's a liquid hydraulics problem here.

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>> [LAUGH] >> That if you have that it fills with

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air, and it tilts you over, and you turn upside down.

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Most improper, instead let's have a one piece bathing suit.

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Which is what she will wear, and then she will move smoothly through the water.

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She slightly spoils it at the end, saying that shingle is very bad at Brighton, so

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I would include heavy boots.

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>> [LAUGH] >> So again, a wonderful Ada-ism,

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I'm just giving you some ideas.

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The whole question of Ada bringing up those three children

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in a way it's quite a tragic thing.

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And though the relationship, very interesting, with all three children.

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And that would be something as a biographer,

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we want to look at that relationship.

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The complicated flirtations, put it no further than that, but

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there's a Mr. Knight, not Mr. Knightly, Mr. Knight.

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Mr. Kaye, Mr. Compton, Mr. Cross, and the exact nature of those relationships.

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And I assume nothing as a biographer.

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What I do notice is that Ada had an extraordinary gift of attracting people,

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she refers to her colony of people.

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People really, the famous enchantress.

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They really were magnetized.

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It was perfectly evident that that's the case,

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which doesn't necessarily imply anything sexual at all.

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But there was a kind of magnetism which is important anyway.

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Very evident that would be to a biographer.

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How questions of music, I mentioned she was an opera fan.

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She adored so when we had the music just now, and

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indeed that modern Ada opera I thought perfect, perfect.

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And she gives very good accounts of going to opera.

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Her writing we know a lot about.

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We know about the gambling, but also she loved horses, and I'll come back to that,

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that's very important.

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The opium letters, I've mentioned, when we're drawn to write about that.

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And then her interest in literature, we know she had

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a good relationship with Charles Dickens, and I'll come back to that.

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And there may be other people which I will just look at towards the end,

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notably Tennyson, I want to send a hare running there.

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And then widening out this focus, her astonishing awareness of what was

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going on in the sciences and technology generally.

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We've just been talking about the computer, but if you go through her

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letters, for example, she is fascinated by railway construction, railway times.

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The bridges.

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She's travelled on a lot of them.

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She writes about airplanes, we'll come back to that.

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And air balloons, about early calculating machines, about the atmospheric railway.

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A wonderful letter of this atmospheric railway which was designed in

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South London.

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Which literally, it used a vacuum system.

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About 20 miles that were built, and

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she describes traveling in it at 25 miles an hour.

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But being Ada,

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she also gives the exact gradient of the ascent that it was going up at 25.

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And she said, that's what's impressive, it's the gradient.

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That's absolutely how Ada's mind worked.

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The whole question of electrical telegraphy.

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The name Wheatstone hascome up cuz he was the one of

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the great early inventors of the electrical telegraph,

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in fact his invention was overtaken by Morse eventually.

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The Americans managed to exploit it more efficiently typically than us but

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Wheatstone is a very important figure.

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I mentioned Maria Mitchell who that first professor discovered an early comet.

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And in came over to London bringing with her the first photograph of a star.

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Very interesting,

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very to show it to the royal society who were very sniffy about it actually.

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>> [LAUGH] >> But which we'll come back to

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Maria Mitchell She's interested in photography and.

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I'll expand on that.

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She's interested in early evolution theory.

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Lamarck, she reads Lamarck, she's interested in that and

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again ,there's a further extension of that.

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She's interested in animal intelligence.

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She's interested in mesmerism, I noticed one of the musical sketches

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called Mesmerism, and how scientifically it can be assessed.

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She's interested in steamboats.

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Wonderful accounts of travelling over to the harbor, what the timetable is.

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How long does it take, do the tides and things affect it and not?

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She's interested in electrical induction and early field theory,

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Faraday's early field theory, and we know certain exchanges of letters about.

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She's also interested in the history of science and scientific discovery.

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This is something I'll try and expand on because I don't think people realize just

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quite how her theoretical interest was.

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And, of course,

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one of the last great things she does is the great exhibition 1851.

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And then she goes, she writes about it.

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And of course Babbage writes about it, Dickens writes about it.

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She's absolutely fascinated by it, even when she's very ill.

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So there's that astonishing range of interests.

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So the image, Bette's image of the kaleidoscope is doubly effective for

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that reason.

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And anybody writing about her would need to be able to cover that huge expanse.

242
00:15:16,987 --> 00:15:22,488
Now what I would like to do is look at around her a number

243
00:15:22,488 --> 00:15:27,380
of people who she knew or whose books she read and

244
00:15:27,380 --> 00:15:31,311
I think affected the way she thought.

245
00:15:31,311 --> 00:15:36,510
And this, I'll try and talk about, Mary Summerville is going to be very important.

246
00:15:36,510 --> 00:15:38,730
We'll go straight to her.

247
00:15:38,730 --> 00:15:42,170
But also William Hewell, also Faraday,

248
00:15:42,170 --> 00:15:46,910
also Harriet Martiner, also Mr. Anonymous, I shall come back to him.

249
00:15:46,910 --> 00:15:49,130
And possibly Alexander von Humboldt.

250
00:15:49,130 --> 00:15:53,550
So we'll just see what we can fit in, in that time.

251
00:15:53,550 --> 00:15:57,960
But before doing that, before expanding that picture, I want to do the reverse.

252
00:15:57,960 --> 00:16:02,086
Biographer's love doing this, they can say I'm gonna give you the huge panorama, and

253
00:16:02,086 --> 00:16:03,720
now look at this tiny little spot.

254
00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:09,083
And that's what I want to look at, three tiny little spots.

255
00:16:09,083 --> 00:16:12,264
The cat We have to mention the cat.

256
00:16:12,264 --> 00:16:14,517
This is Madame Puff.

257
00:16:14,517 --> 00:16:19,354
This is Ada's cat with whom she had long conversations,

258
00:16:19,354 --> 00:16:25,220
with whom she had letters in French possibly written by Ada's cat.

259
00:16:25,220 --> 00:16:27,400
Or certainly written about Ada's cat.

260
00:16:27,400 --> 00:16:32,050
All the trouble in the household, usually Ada was responsible, not Ada.

261
00:16:32,050 --> 00:16:36,350
Ada's mom said she was responsible for it, but actually it was the lovely Puff,

262
00:16:36,350 --> 00:16:41,400
who was responsible for making her late, for making her being mischievous.

263
00:16:41,400 --> 00:16:46,480
And this drawing, I know it's rather weak but here's something very touching.

264
00:16:46,480 --> 00:16:50,550
It's drawn by her mother, Lady Byron.

265
00:16:50,550 --> 00:16:53,657
The lovely Puff in a sweet slumber.

266
00:16:53,657 --> 00:16:56,001
Third of June, 1825.

267
00:16:56,001 --> 00:16:59,550
And that says also something about the mother, daughter relationship.

268
00:16:59,550 --> 00:17:03,400
And that's the signature at the bottom,

269
00:17:03,400 --> 00:17:10,000
Anna Isabella Noel Byron Pinkset painted it third of June, 1825.

270
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,654
And that is from a commonplace book.

271
00:17:13,654 --> 00:17:18,809
And Puff has an extraordinary later life.

272
00:17:18,809 --> 00:17:22,311
One thing I want to suggest to you is this,

273
00:17:22,311 --> 00:17:27,015
that I think Ada, throughout her life had very acute and

274
00:17:27,015 --> 00:17:32,620
perceptive knowledge of, understanding of animals.

275
00:17:32,620 --> 00:17:35,210
And it begins with a cat and later in life, it's the horse.

276
00:17:35,210 --> 00:17:39,230
She has many horses, dogs in the country.

277
00:17:39,230 --> 00:17:41,190
And they follow her around.

278
00:17:41,190 --> 00:17:43,210
She names everybody, every horse.

279
00:17:43,210 --> 00:17:46,050
Every animal in the household has a name, probably a personality,

280
00:17:46,050 --> 00:17:47,980
probably writes letters as well.

281
00:17:47,980 --> 00:17:49,600
Not necessarily in French.

282
00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:52,270
But this is an important thing.

283
00:17:52,270 --> 00:17:56,578
Ada, who we've been focusing on Ada and the machine, clink clank.

284
00:17:56,578 --> 00:18:01,343
But Ada also has this understanding of the very thing which is not a machine,

285
00:18:01,343 --> 00:18:03,439
an animal and an empathetic one.

286
00:18:03,439 --> 00:18:06,610
And it runs right through her letters, and again,

287
00:18:06,610 --> 00:18:10,973
the sense of the kaleidoscope, her extraordinary range in that way.

288
00:18:10,973 --> 00:18:15,858
And there's just a little footnote to pin this down that as it were,

289
00:18:15,858 --> 00:18:17,497
I'm not making it up.

290
00:18:17,497 --> 00:18:23,634
In 1844, March, after her translation notes had been published,

291
00:18:23,634 --> 00:18:29,477
the Scottish playwright Joanna Bailey writes to Mary Summerville.

292
00:18:29,477 --> 00:18:33,745
And I'm going to talk about that in one moment, who was then in Italy and

293
00:18:33,745 --> 00:18:36,460
she writes this wonderful sentence to Mary.

294
00:18:36,460 --> 00:18:39,890
She says the lady, I can't do the Scottish accent, I'll try.

295
00:18:39,890 --> 00:18:44,930
The lady who we know so well as little Ada,

296
00:18:44,930 --> 00:18:50,380
whose chief conversation used to be about a Persian cat,

297
00:18:50,380 --> 00:18:57,020
Puff by name, is beginning to be known a little in the literary world.

298
00:18:57,020 --> 00:19:00,650
And that, the moment that she's published that translation.

299
00:19:00,650 --> 00:19:06,330
So I just introduced that one to make you think slightly differently about

300
00:19:06,330 --> 00:19:08,570
Ada's mind and her imagination as she was.

301
00:19:08,570 --> 00:19:12,170
Second one.

302
00:19:12,170 --> 00:19:16,634
Now there was a big talk in the workshop yesterday about this.

303
00:19:16,634 --> 00:19:18,979
This is Ada aged probably 11 or 12.

304
00:19:18,979 --> 00:19:22,657
Neither of those are originals, the bird, in fact,

305
00:19:22,657 --> 00:19:28,600
is drawn by Otto who's a flight expert, but later on in the century.

306
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:33,840
But why I've given that is to explain the way Ada was thinking.

307
00:19:33,840 --> 00:19:38,310
This 11 or 12 year old girl, we know, somewhere around this time,

308
00:19:38,310 --> 00:19:43,270
she had measles and she was in bed for 18 months.

309
00:19:43,270 --> 00:19:45,430
And she was moving around on crutches.

310
00:19:45,430 --> 00:19:47,126
So the idea of flight.

311
00:19:47,126 --> 00:19:48,576
>> Sorry.

312
00:19:48,576 --> 00:19:54,084
>> Aha!

313
00:19:54,084 --> 00:19:55,580
I see, Ada's infant.

314
00:19:55,580 --> 00:19:58,250
Very good, thank you very much.

315
00:19:58,250 --> 00:20:00,520
Cuz that bird wasn't flapping enough, perhaps.

316
00:20:00,520 --> 00:20:07,310
The fact that she, there she is in bed or at least not able to move.

317
00:20:07,310 --> 00:20:10,100
The idea of flight becomes very important to her.

318
00:20:10,100 --> 00:20:13,811
I would also have to say something gendered, that i wouldn't be so

319
00:20:13,811 --> 00:20:17,871
surprised if it was a little boy of 11 or 12, thinking about flying.

320
00:20:17,871 --> 00:20:22,143
Much more unusual that it was Ada thinking about flying, I think.

321
00:20:22,143 --> 00:20:23,129
Now more than that,

322
00:20:23,129 --> 00:20:26,450
I've written a whole book about balloons in the Victorian period.

323
00:20:26,450 --> 00:20:32,330
And the thing that astonishes me is Ada wasn't interested in balloons, why?

324
00:20:32,330 --> 00:20:35,305
Because they were too uncontrolled.

325
00:20:35,305 --> 00:20:38,428
There was no way of getting decent equations out of them.

326
00:20:38,428 --> 00:20:42,668
Whereas the bird and flight was something and here's from,

327
00:20:42,668 --> 00:20:46,589
just little notes from letters, this is to her mother.

328
00:20:46,589 --> 00:20:52,283
I'm going to begin my paper wings, my paper wings tomorrow and

329
00:20:52,283 --> 00:20:56,272
the more I think of writing a book flyology.

330
00:20:56,272 --> 00:21:00,300
To be illustrated with plates, [INAUDIBLE] that's what would happen,

331
00:21:00,300 --> 00:21:02,727
if I ever really invent a method of flying.

332
00:21:02,727 --> 00:21:09,670
Signature yours, dearest carrier pigeon, and she's becoming that thing.

333
00:21:09,670 --> 00:21:15,548
And we find out that Ada has a flying room, which has ropes above it so

334
00:21:15,548 --> 00:21:20,070
she can imagine herself flying with wings.

335
00:21:20,070 --> 00:21:25,670
And then, very interesting, she says, I'm going to take the exact pattern

336
00:21:25,670 --> 00:21:31,460
of a bird's wings in proportion to the size of its body.

337
00:21:31,460 --> 00:21:32,690
So at 11 years old,

338
00:21:32,690 --> 00:21:36,260
she's understood that if something's going to fly, the body weight and

339
00:21:36,260 --> 00:21:40,700
length must have some proportionate relationship with the wing size.

340
00:21:40,700 --> 00:21:44,670
Now I suggest that is pretty unusual at 11 years old, then, all right?

341
00:21:44,670 --> 00:21:47,170
And so she thinks in that way.

342
00:21:47,170 --> 00:21:51,290
And then she thinks, and this is why the second illustration is there.

343
00:21:51,290 --> 00:21:56,960
To make the thing in the form of a horse with a steam engine inside it so

344
00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:02,760
contrived as to move an immense pair of wings fixed on the outside.

345
00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:05,820
And of course, A, she realized it needs a power source.

346
00:22:05,820 --> 00:22:08,383
This is a great problem for the 19th century to solve.

347
00:22:08,383 --> 00:22:13,138
But also she's come back to Pegasus, cuz she adores horses, and

348
00:22:13,138 --> 00:22:16,173
the very poetic idea of the flying horse.

349
00:22:16,173 --> 00:22:23,300
And in fact, we then find this.

350
00:22:23,300 --> 00:22:28,351
This is from a recently discovered notebook which is probably of

351
00:22:28,351 --> 00:22:33,960
William Sinclair, which is a commonplace book which was in the Noel family.

352
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:37,390
And this looks like it's a picture of Ada.

353
00:22:37,390 --> 00:22:42,000
It's got a Byron quote about Ada written on the side.

354
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:50,060
Handwritten picture of Ada who says that she decided to move from flying to horses.

355
00:22:50,060 --> 00:22:53,602
All right, it might be easier to do, all right?

356
00:22:53,602 --> 00:22:57,530
But, she does say this and again, this says so much to me.

357
00:22:57,530 --> 00:23:01,130
I have now decided upon making much smaller wings.

358
00:23:01,130 --> 00:23:04,290
Not nearly large enough to actually fly with but

359
00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:08,990
enough to explain perfectly to anyone my project for

360
00:23:08,990 --> 00:23:13,960
flying and it will serve as a model for my future real wings.

361
00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:18,100
And again, that's the science way of thinking with, I'm going to make a model.

362
00:23:18,100 --> 00:23:22,010
Which will have all the conception of this machine in it.

363
00:23:22,010 --> 00:23:24,170
I won't be able to build the actual machine but

364
00:23:24,170 --> 00:23:27,390
I'll have the model of it where we're going to hear that, all right?

365
00:23:27,390 --> 00:23:31,050
And this is still Ada at 11 or 12 years old.

366
00:23:31,050 --> 00:23:36,190
And then one more link, we're now forward to the 1840s.

367
00:23:36,190 --> 00:23:41,672
And when she's talking about the way that she thinks mathematics and science can

368
00:23:41,672 --> 00:23:47,165
take us outwards, and we'll talk a little bit more about the idea of discovery.

369
00:23:47,165 --> 00:23:48,965
She uses this phrase,

370
00:23:48,965 --> 00:23:54,556
those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds,

371
00:23:54,556 --> 00:24:00,549
by means of what are commonly termed par excellence, the exact sciences.

372
00:24:00,549 --> 00:24:05,507
May then with the fair white wings of imagination,

373
00:24:05,507 --> 00:24:10,584
hope to soar further into the unexplored.

374
00:24:10,584 --> 00:24:12,289
Which we live.

375
00:24:12,289 --> 00:24:19,550
So there's her flying machine, now as a mental symbol of imagination.

376
00:24:19,550 --> 00:24:25,970
Finally, as our little glimpses, this.

377
00:24:25,970 --> 00:24:27,580
This comes from a later date.

378
00:24:27,580 --> 00:24:29,510
There were still no photographs of the moon.

379
00:24:29,510 --> 00:24:31,970
This amazingly is [INAUDIBLE] a painting.

380
00:24:31,970 --> 00:24:37,680
Based on some of the observations of both William Herschel and John Herschel.

381
00:24:37,680 --> 00:24:42,270
And Ada was fascinated by this, but she received

382
00:24:42,270 --> 00:24:48,180
a letter from her mother in Paris, who teased her and said, we've got

383
00:24:48,180 --> 00:24:53,160
various new French information about the moon but this this

384
00:24:53,160 --> 00:24:58,321
would only interest you from a scientific point of view, not from a poetical one.

385
00:24:58,321 --> 00:25:03,130
Moon being one part of a subject, and this is what Ada replies.

386
00:25:03,130 --> 00:25:09,830
Tell the hen, that's how much she called her mum in a not friendly way.

387
00:25:09,830 --> 00:25:13,690
Tell the hen, I'm feck vexed at her thinking

388
00:25:13,690 --> 00:25:18,580
I can only take her mathematical astronomical view of the heavens.

389
00:25:18,580 --> 00:25:21,550
And that if I were to write verses on the moon

390
00:25:21,550 --> 00:25:25,160
the subject would be the living things of our satellite.

391
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:29,320
And then she goes in effect to write a prose play about the moon,

392
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:33,650
I would wonder whether its surface, so fair and so bright, would open as

393
00:25:33,650 --> 00:25:41,030
perplexing a perspective of mixed wheel and as our own orb, the Earth, does.

394
00:25:41,030 --> 00:25:44,590
So she imagines being on the moon and then looking back.

395
00:25:44,590 --> 00:25:47,480
I should wonder whether the shadows

396
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:51,980
which are dimly visible in our glittering countenance are truly emblematic of

397
00:25:51,980 --> 00:25:56,990
the spiritual state suited to her physical conditions.

398
00:25:56,990 --> 00:26:03,130
And then in short, I could compose a very sublime poem,

399
00:26:03,130 --> 00:26:08,080
but not a word therein of mathematics and the laws of motion.

400
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:14,990
So the hen has not quite such a kooky daughter as she supposes.

401
00:26:14,990 --> 00:26:18,510
I'd love to suggest that's the first time the word kooky,

402
00:26:18,510 --> 00:26:21,055
which possibly is the answer of geeky.

403
00:26:21,055 --> 00:26:22,490
>> [LAUGH] >> And

404
00:26:22,490 --> 00:26:26,157
there it is in one of Ada's absolutely wonderful letters.

405
00:26:26,157 --> 00:26:31,938
And then, that in fact that planetary imagery continues throughout her writing,

406
00:26:31,938 --> 00:26:33,848
here's just one example.

407
00:26:33,848 --> 00:26:40,430
1844 the year that she had completed the translation of notes.

408
00:26:40,430 --> 00:26:43,780
I seemed to myself as if condemned to liberty,

409
00:26:43,780 --> 00:26:49,250
condemned to liberty as if I were ordered by providence to be a wandering and

410
00:26:49,250 --> 00:26:52,980
erratic star among the boundless heavens.

411
00:26:52,980 --> 00:26:58,160
In vain seeking for entrance into some planetary system.

412
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:02,910
In vain praying to obey some sun.

413
00:27:02,910 --> 00:27:06,060
That idea might be developed into a fine poem.

414
00:27:06,060 --> 00:27:10,090
The disobedient and wondering star.

415
00:27:10,090 --> 00:27:15,200
Yes, there's Ada, an image of herself for a moment, that sense condemned to liberty.

416
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:19,490
The disobedient and wandering star.

417
00:27:19,490 --> 00:27:20,290
Just focus.

418
00:27:20,290 --> 00:27:23,600
Just to try and make you think a little bit differently about Ada,

419
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:25,370
the kaleidoscopic Ada.

420
00:27:25,370 --> 00:27:31,270
And now, I would like to just now expand out a little bit.

421
00:27:31,270 --> 00:27:35,160
Mary Somerville, there was a lovely question from over there on that word

422
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:36,880
connection, which picks up.

423
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:42,480
And of course it relates to was great book on the connection of physical sciences.

424
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:46,910
I put in each of these images just to show you that these texts are now current

425
00:27:46,910 --> 00:27:48,300
and available.

426
00:27:48,300 --> 00:27:50,790
I suggest to say something about Mary Summerville who

427
00:27:50,790 --> 00:27:54,470
I think was tremendously important in Ada's life.

428
00:27:54,470 --> 00:27:58,995
Then when they met of course, it was one of the reasons that she couldn't

429
00:27:58,995 --> 00:28:05,460
[INAUDIBLE] because Marry Summerville got on very well with her mother

430
00:28:05,460 --> 00:28:10,780
and therefore was create a fandom of and therefore socially this was allowable.

431
00:28:10,780 --> 00:28:17,500
Mary Summerville was 54 at the age they met, Ada, 18, so again, very interesting

432
00:28:17,500 --> 00:28:21,940
that kind of divergence or dynamic between them.

433
00:28:21,940 --> 00:28:24,890
We know very early on that

434
00:28:24,890 --> 00:28:29,100
Ada mentions this on the connection of the physical scientist book.

435
00:28:29,100 --> 00:28:32,210
1834, the very year it's published.

436
00:28:32,210 --> 00:28:34,250
And she's obviously fascinated by it and

437
00:28:34,250 --> 00:28:37,260
I'm just going to look a little bit closer why.

438
00:28:37,260 --> 00:28:42,700
For a start, Mary Somerville completely different background.

439
00:28:42,700 --> 00:28:48,640
Scottish born on a burnt island which is sort just north of Edinburgh.

440
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:54,040
Naval connections of her father who died quite young.

441
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:56,070
A very unhappy first marriage and

442
00:28:56,070 --> 00:29:00,050
then a very successful second marriage to William Somerville.

443
00:29:00,050 --> 00:29:04,400
Fellow of the royal society who'd been a traveler, also in the navy,

444
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:06,910
and come back and was immensely kind and

445
00:29:06,910 --> 00:29:11,470
supportive to Mary Somerville throughout their two lives together.

446
00:29:11,470 --> 00:29:14,980
And they made one of those households that attract people.

447
00:29:14,980 --> 00:29:19,980
And the moment Ada got to know them, they almost adopted her and she went over,

448
00:29:19,980 --> 00:29:23,270
they had a house at Chelsea Hospital, in South London.

449
00:29:23,270 --> 00:29:27,600
And the pattern of visiting Babbage, to begin with, was she, Ada,

450
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:32,000
would go over on a social visit to the Chelsea Hospital, to the Somerville's.

451
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:33,390
They would put her in a coach and

452
00:29:33,390 --> 00:29:37,770
take her up to First Dorset Street, Number One Dorset Street.

453
00:29:37,770 --> 00:29:40,900
Which is where Babbage held his great parties,

454
00:29:40,900 --> 00:29:44,850
his great Saturday champagne, science, champagne parties.

455
00:29:44,850 --> 00:29:46,803
Oh, I wish we'd been there, all right.

456
00:29:46,803 --> 00:29:49,520
>> [LAUGH] >> And he held those for

457
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:52,380
about 30 years, and everybody came to that.

458
00:29:52,380 --> 00:29:54,120
Everybody came to those parties.

459
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,160
I mean just pluck what Charles Love, for example,

460
00:29:56,160 --> 00:30:00,740
that's where Ada would have met him.

461
00:30:00,740 --> 00:30:06,810
So, she is a fantastic enabler and even down to the wonderful descriptions

462
00:30:06,810 --> 00:30:12,190
that they sit down and there's a whole evening that they just spend,

463
00:30:12,190 --> 00:30:18,690
Mary Somerville and Ada discussing what does the word discover mean, right?

464
00:30:18,690 --> 00:30:20,400
And we'll follow that up.

465
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:24,580
Also overnight, she is allowed to stay with the summer girls.

466
00:30:24,580 --> 00:30:28,960
So she gets away from, I wouldn't say specifically her mother,

467
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,980
but in a way she gets away from that barren background for a moment.

468
00:30:32,980 --> 00:30:35,830
So Mary Somerville is immensely enabling, and

469
00:30:35,830 --> 00:30:41,040
her own career, which had started held up by this very unhappy first marriage.

470
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:42,580
She starts late.

471
00:30:42,580 --> 00:30:48,770
She begins to publish papers on solar light polarization, solar light,

472
00:30:48,770 --> 00:30:54,750
in the Royal Institution's Philosophical Transactions.

473
00:30:54,750 --> 00:31:00,710
Then she's challenged to do, guess what, a translation.

474
00:31:00,710 --> 00:31:02,362
And it's a translation of Laplace.

475
00:31:02,362 --> 00:31:08,730
His [FOREIGN] very technical and difficult book but

476
00:31:08,730 --> 00:31:12,940
she translated it, that's wonderful descriptions, like Jane Austin she hides

477
00:31:12,940 --> 00:31:17,560
the papers when anybody comes into the room so they don't know she's translating.

478
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:21,880
It's a brilliantly successful translation, a mechanism of the heavens and

479
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:27,160
it in fact is used In Cambridge by the undergraduates.

480
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:31,940
And the first woman's textbook, alright, in translation.

481
00:31:31,940 --> 00:31:35,370
I just note that's how she begins by translating, not her own work,

482
00:31:35,370 --> 00:31:36,680
by translating.

483
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:41,090
And then, having done this so successfully and written a very interesting

484
00:31:41,090 --> 00:31:48,160
introduction to it John suggests why doesn't she write her own book.

485
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,720
Remember this dialogue?

486
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:52,600
Wrote their own book so.

487
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,250
And Mary Summerville does write it and

488
00:31:55,250 --> 00:32:00,880
it's on the connection of the physical which is published in 1834.

489
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:03,747
Just let me say a word about that.

490
00:32:03,747 --> 00:32:08,637
That it's quite a story published by John Murray,

491
00:32:08,637 --> 00:32:13,651
The same publisher of Byron, Jane Austen and so on.

492
00:32:13,651 --> 00:32:21,160
It becomes his best selling text up to The Origin of Species, okay?

493
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:25,830
It's got it's a 500 page book, you can read there,

494
00:32:25,830 --> 00:32:29,610
presented in 37 short chapters.

495
00:32:29,610 --> 00:32:33,990
And they reduced the traditional they panorama of natural philosophy

496
00:32:33,990 --> 00:32:35,670
into something much tighter,

497
00:32:35,670 --> 00:32:38,470
modern feeling that we would recognize into the high sciences.

498
00:32:38,470 --> 00:32:42,620
Astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, geography, meteorology, and

499
00:32:42,620 --> 00:32:43,740
electromagnetism, and

500
00:32:43,740 --> 00:32:47,700
a lot of that stuff, most of today's stuff is in that last section.

501
00:32:47,700 --> 00:32:52,665
And she has a particular style, of very clear logical explanation but

502
00:32:52,665 --> 00:32:56,128
which she can let go at some moments, all right.

503
00:32:56,128 --> 00:33:00,745
And then remember partial science that we could give you a couple of

504
00:33:00,745 --> 00:33:02,071
examples of this.

505
00:33:02,071 --> 00:33:06,592
Universal gravity, a force equally present,

506
00:33:06,592 --> 00:33:14,063
a force equally present in the dissent of a rain drop as in the falls of Niagara.

507
00:33:14,063 --> 00:33:18,943
In the weight of the air, as in the periods of the Moon, so

508
00:33:18,943 --> 00:33:22,301
it's suddenly just to make you think,

509
00:33:22,301 --> 00:33:26,596
get you away from that falling apple, all right?

510
00:33:26,596 --> 00:33:29,421
She then says it also is responsible for

511
00:33:29,421 --> 00:33:34,280
certain disturbances in nature which is her reading of LePlass.

512
00:33:34,280 --> 00:33:39,510
Every tremor that excites in any one planet is immediately transmitted

513
00:33:39,510 --> 00:33:45,170
to the furthest limits of the system in oscillations like sympathetic

514
00:33:45,170 --> 00:33:51,690
notes in music or vibrations from the deep tones of an organ.

515
00:33:51,690 --> 00:33:56,740
Now that's the way that Mary Somerville writes about science constantly

516
00:33:56,740 --> 00:33:58,000
while doing this simple,

517
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:01,770
straightforward explanation, she then opens it up for a moment.

518
00:34:01,770 --> 00:34:06,220
And this is what absolutely fascinated Ada,

519
00:34:06,220 --> 00:34:09,480
give you a couple more examples of that.

520
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:14,330
The propagation of sound may be illustrated by field of corn,

521
00:34:14,330 --> 00:34:21,140
agitated in the wind [INAUDIBLE] that's how sound [INAUDIBLE].

522
00:34:21,140 --> 00:34:26,214
Anyone who observed the reflection of the waves on the wall,

523
00:34:26,214 --> 00:34:31,388
on the side of a river after the passage of a steam boat will have

524
00:34:31,388 --> 00:34:38,571
a perfect idea of the reflections of both sound and of light, again wonderful image.

525
00:34:38,571 --> 00:34:42,633
As the steam boat moves we've all seen that the ripples that a way just to

526
00:34:42,633 --> 00:34:45,870
explain that to lead you into the subject.

527
00:34:45,870 --> 00:34:49,270
And shes also very very interested In

528
00:34:49,270 --> 00:34:53,130
a material that's at the very edge of scientific perception.

529
00:34:53,130 --> 00:34:58,470
So she writes about of course infrared rays and ultraviolet web discovered and

530
00:34:58,470 --> 00:35:03,050
she calls them undulations beyond the human optic nerve.

531
00:35:03,050 --> 00:35:07,923
And she speculates particularly on what function that it might have, infrared and

532
00:35:07,923 --> 00:35:12,047
ultraviolet which we now know of course it does in the animal kingdom.

533
00:35:12,047 --> 00:35:17,438
We are altogether ignorant of the perceptions which direct

534
00:35:17,438 --> 00:35:22,501
the carry of pigeon to his home or those in the antennae of

535
00:35:22,501 --> 00:35:27,377
an insect which warns them of the approach of danger.

536
00:35:27,377 --> 00:35:31,875
And again, that wonderful way of suggesting that scientific knowledge has

537
00:35:31,875 --> 00:35:36,722
got so far that I think we don't know and that's what we should be interested in and

538
00:35:36,722 --> 00:35:40,530
this clearly connects with the way Ada's mind is working.

539
00:35:40,530 --> 00:35:47,630
So that she writes a little after reading the connection

540
00:35:47,630 --> 00:35:54,560
that famous description of mathematical science shows us what is.

541
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:59,650
It is the language of the unseen relations between things, but

542
00:35:59,650 --> 00:36:05,890
to use and apply that language we must be able to fully appreciate

543
00:36:05,890 --> 00:36:11,370
to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.

544
00:36:11,370 --> 00:36:15,450
And that is an idea that's come out of Mary Summerville's writing and then has

545
00:36:15,450 --> 00:36:22,310
been fully adopted by Ada, that notion of science and the scientific imagination.

546
00:36:22,310 --> 00:36:25,100
Now there's more to be said about that, but I'll try and

547
00:36:25,100 --> 00:36:27,640
come back to it in a different way.

548
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:33,310
And it says that that relationship, which i think was mentally supportive

549
00:36:33,310 --> 00:36:38,270
to Ada, it was broken because simply that the family, of course,

550
00:36:38,270 --> 00:36:43,040
not owning her were down in financial terms.

551
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:47,650
They couldn't go on living in London so then like so many of the generation and

552
00:36:47,650 --> 00:36:54,530
rights, they went to Italy and they lived alternately in Naples and in Florence.

553
00:36:54,530 --> 00:36:59,931
And in fact Mary Summerville's tomb is still there,

554
00:36:59,931 --> 00:37:07,259
it needs repair, it's cracked, maybe that will happen, we will see.

555
00:37:07,259 --> 00:37:13,176
And she is visited not by Aida but Maria Mitchell the American astronomer

556
00:37:13,176 --> 00:37:18,317
comes out as shes a great focus and always looking back at Ada and

557
00:37:18,317 --> 00:37:23,070
long after Ada's death in her own personal reminiscences

558
00:37:23,070 --> 00:37:27,144
Mary Summerville describes that relationship.

559
00:37:27,144 --> 00:37:28,823
And with great fondness and

560
00:37:28,823 --> 00:37:33,057
in fact quite interestingly she actually says it was me who led Adrian

561
00:37:33,057 --> 00:37:37,520
to mathematics when we know the story is much for complicated than that.

562
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:40,870
And just one thing which would amused Adrian I think,

563
00:37:40,870 --> 00:37:45,838
when Maria Mitchell goes out they they want to do some astronomical observing.

564
00:37:45,838 --> 00:37:50,489
And Mary Summerville who is very famous now with his European reputation, and

565
00:37:50,489 --> 00:37:52,550
publishing other books.

566
00:37:52,550 --> 00:37:58,040
She says, yes we can i would love to take you to the Vatican observatory.

567
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:02,530
There's one problem Maria, which is the authorities at the Vatican

568
00:38:02,530 --> 00:38:07,325
observatory will only allow women in daylight.

569
00:38:07,325 --> 00:38:11,097
>> [LAUGH] >> So

570
00:38:11,097 --> 00:38:15,338
beautifully told, it's a wonderful Maria Mitchell joke, right?

571
00:38:15,338 --> 00:38:19,941
Now I'm gonna slightly speed up, I'm very well aware this is the last your hanging

572
00:38:19,941 --> 00:38:24,247
on in there and focus is difficult to have so let me just speed you now through.

573
00:38:24,247 --> 00:38:25,391
Remember my overall thing,

574
00:38:25,391 --> 00:38:28,930
I'm trying to give you a frame in a way that we haven't quite looked at it before.

575
00:38:28,930 --> 00:38:33,860
Now here is Babbage, but Babbage as he is also one of the bridge war to treaties.

576
00:38:33,860 --> 00:38:38,500
And his great friend and in the end great rival, William Praed,

577
00:38:38,500 --> 00:38:42,930
North countryman who becomes very powerful, writes a number of papers,

578
00:38:42,930 --> 00:38:48,844
notably a history of the inductive sciences,

579
00:38:48,844 --> 00:38:53,070
and then finally a followup, a philosophy of the inductive sciences.

580
00:38:53,070 --> 00:38:58,880
A great theoretician of early and mid-Victorian science

581
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:03,990
and he wrote that one of the first Bridgewater Treatises were

582
00:39:03,990 --> 00:39:09,330
launched in 1829, quite early, inspired by William Paley.

583
00:39:09,330 --> 00:39:14,910
And the idea basically, was to show that science justified

584
00:39:14,910 --> 00:39:19,860
the creation by God that was the basic challenge, all right.

585
00:39:19,860 --> 00:39:23,906
And William Hue took on the one which is called

586
00:39:23,906 --> 00:39:28,379
the astronomy in general physical in 1833 and

587
00:39:28,379 --> 00:39:33,809
Babbage his old friend was shocked and dismayed by this and so

588
00:39:33,809 --> 00:39:41,502
he wrote in 1837 the 9th [INAUDIBLE] which had not been commissioned, all right?

589
00:39:41,502 --> 00:39:47,051
This is Babbage causing mischief, all right?

590
00:39:47,051 --> 00:39:51,417
I'll give you a couple examples of it, cuz I know Ada and [INAUDIBLE] wrote,

591
00:39:51,417 --> 00:39:54,537
read the [INAUDIBLE] and wrote her mother about it, and

592
00:39:54,537 --> 00:39:59,045
of course read the Babbage Treaties which first which he has been complaining

593
00:39:59,045 --> 00:40:00,667
he'd written it too fast.

594
00:40:00,667 --> 00:40:03,381
But it contains some very interesting ideas,

595
00:40:03,381 --> 00:40:06,241
i ll just see if i can just sketch a couple of them.

596
00:40:06,241 --> 00:40:09,937
In answer to Hughes ideas that The Biblical Creation.

597
00:40:09,937 --> 00:40:14,970
We could still accept this and that species were individually created.

598
00:40:14,970 --> 00:40:20,460
And also, extinction of species where individually God was intervening.

599
00:40:20,460 --> 00:40:25,538
Babbage was uneasy about this, so he wanted to suggest some other

600
00:40:25,538 --> 00:40:32,820
mechanism without directly claiming that he was an Atheist.

601
00:40:32,820 --> 00:40:35,560
He just wanted to suggest another mechanism.

602
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:40,582
So basicall,y what he does is he suggests that God

603
00:40:40,582 --> 00:40:47,435
really has enormous calculating, or analytical engine, right.

604
00:40:47,435 --> 00:40:48,470
>> [LAUGH] >> And

605
00:40:48,470 --> 00:40:53,500
what he's set in >> Right at the beginning,

606
00:40:53,500 --> 00:40:57,710
he sets up the what we've now think of evolution is entirely setup

607
00:40:57,710 --> 00:41:01,010
as it's immensely complicated computer program.

608
00:41:01,010 --> 00:41:05,110
All right, and it would include for instance the extinction of species.

609
00:41:05,110 --> 00:41:11,680
I think commander but [INAUDIBLE] will be conditional branching.

610
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,820
That something, it's suddenly to a surprise to theatre.

611
00:41:14,820 --> 00:41:17,830
But it's already, it's all built in there.

612
00:41:17,830 --> 00:41:23,631
And God has invented this miraculous machinei

613
00:41:23,631 --> 00:41:29,365
andi it is works on this law I'm quoting, so complicated the analysis itself,

614
00:41:29,365 --> 00:41:35,215
in its present state, can scarcely be grasped as a question, all right.

615
00:41:35,215 --> 00:41:39,655
But he launches that idea in answer to.

616
00:41:39,655 --> 00:41:43,565
And of course, when you reflect on it, and I would love to be able to do this,

617
00:41:43,565 --> 00:41:45,900
I don't think I'm actually competent to do it.

618
00:41:45,900 --> 00:41:52,230
But it seems to me that Babbage has got a Darwinian notion of evolution,

619
00:41:52,230 --> 00:41:59,150
but he's expressed it in terms of God as the first computer programmer.

620
00:41:59,150 --> 00:42:06,040
And one other thing theretThat Babbage also is

621
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:09,640
complex in a way that there hasn't quite come out I don't think at the moment.

622
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:15,210
Here's a passage from that ninth and

623
00:42:15,210 --> 00:42:21,090
he's singing of question, soothing as a computer man in a sense but

624
00:42:21,090 --> 00:42:24,420
what happens to human voice when it speaks,

625
00:42:24,420 --> 00:42:29,030
if you look at it technically, scientifically.

626
00:42:29,030 --> 00:42:35,130
The pulsations of the air, I'm quoting, once set in motion by the human voice,

627
00:42:35,130 --> 00:42:39,190
ceased not to exist with sounds to which they gave rise.

628
00:42:39,190 --> 00:42:43,890
The waves of that air thus raised Perambulate the Earth's and

629
00:42:43,890 --> 00:42:45,560
ocean’s surface.

630
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:48,500
Every atom of which must continue

631
00:42:48,500 --> 00:42:52,800
to influence its past throughout its future existence.

632
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:58,800
The air itself is thus one vast library,

633
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:01,840
on whose pages are for ever written.

634
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:06,835
All that man has ever said a woman whispered.

635
00:43:06,835 --> 00:43:08,980
>> [LAUGH] Okay.

636
00:43:08,980 --> 00:43:12,120
So again, I think that kind of thing,

637
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:17,200
it's quite clear that this appealed to Ada and it, it set,

638
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:22,860
it raises crescents well, that intensity in some.

639
00:43:22,860 --> 00:43:29,740
And one other further note I want to, is that mention that Ada also read,

640
00:43:29,740 --> 00:43:33,840
let's see if I can get this up quickly, just get up this image.

641
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:34,510
It'll do.

642
00:43:34,510 --> 00:43:39,180
Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences.

643
00:43:39,180 --> 00:43:44,850
And this set her on the path of this discussion of what is discovery

644
00:43:44,850 --> 00:43:48,190
because you put forward the notion of induction

645
00:43:48,190 --> 00:43:51,940
which very simply meant that facts are gathered, gathered and gathered and

646
00:43:51,940 --> 00:43:56,460
finally they get threaded on a string and you have a law, all right?

647
00:43:56,460 --> 00:43:59,370
It's a very crude way of putting what it is but

648
00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:04,930
later then becomes fascinated by the so notion, what is discovery?

649
00:44:04,930 --> 00:44:07,680
How does it work in a human mind?

650
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:08,350
It's very important.

651
00:44:08,350 --> 00:44:10,790
We're in an age of great discovery.

652
00:44:10,790 --> 00:44:14,950
What kind of imagination is it that discovers things?

653
00:44:14,950 --> 00:44:20,970
And she writes, I intend to incorporate with one department of

654
00:44:20,970 --> 00:44:26,510
my labors a complete reduction to a system of the principles,

655
00:44:26,510 --> 00:44:34,120
and methods of discovery, elucidating the same with full examples.

656
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:39,270
And I am already noting down a list of discoveries hitherto made,

657
00:44:39,270 --> 00:44:43,830
in order myself to examine into that history, origin and progress.

658
00:44:43,830 --> 00:44:47,510
So, she's going to write an even better book than.

659
00:44:47,510 --> 00:44:50,090
Now, it's one of the many projects she didn't write, but

660
00:44:50,090 --> 00:44:53,120
it's very important that she was thinking like that.

661
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:57,720
And it's partly the result of reading these books,

662
00:44:57,720 --> 00:45:02,040
at this treatise and then the history of induction.

663
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:08,103
And of course, from that, just read that [INAUDIBLE] note on imagination which

664
00:45:08,103 --> 00:45:12,140
referred to, which I think was partly inspired by Hubert,

665
00:45:12,140 --> 00:45:17,180
also by Courage and the Biographica and his idea of the imagination.

666
00:45:17,180 --> 00:45:22,070
And she says it's three things, the confining faculty, the conceiving faculty,

667
00:45:22,070 --> 00:45:27,580
and third, imagination is the discovering faculty, pre-eminently.

668
00:45:27,580 --> 00:45:33,190
It's that which penetrates into the unseen world around us, the world of science.

669
00:45:33,190 --> 00:45:35,260
And again, repeating that theme.

670
00:45:35,260 --> 00:45:41,850
So, that comes partly from her reading, and partly from her own fascination with.

671
00:45:41,850 --> 00:45:48,399
Now Granted, there's a curve to describe what I'm going to do,

672
00:45:48,399 --> 00:45:51,430
but basically, it's speeding up and speeding up and speeding up.

673
00:45:51,430 --> 00:45:53,820
I think it's an acceleration curve, all right?

674
00:45:53,820 --> 00:45:57,420
Because I'm aware that the evening is drawing to a close.

675
00:45:57,420 --> 00:46:04,910
Faraday, we know about the extraordinary dialogue, set of letters between them.

676
00:46:04,910 --> 00:46:10,210
That he refuses in the end to take her on as a pupil.

677
00:46:10,210 --> 00:46:14,980
You know, I don't think anybody's made the famous quote that this is

678
00:46:14,980 --> 00:46:17,670
introducing Ada to Faraday.

679
00:46:17,670 --> 00:46:23,060
That enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract

680
00:46:23,060 --> 00:46:28,330
of sciences and has grasped it with a force that few masculine intellects

681
00:46:28,330 --> 00:46:34,730
in our country, at least, could have exerted over it.

682
00:46:34,730 --> 00:46:39,610
And that wonderful introduction, and in fact,

683
00:46:39,610 --> 00:46:45,510
what then happens is Ada says that she wants to work out this.

684
00:46:45,510 --> 00:46:48,540
System, the nervous system, and analysis of the nervous system, and then,

685
00:46:48,540 --> 00:46:52,280
she says to Faraday, I mean, unless you disguise me to undertake

686
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:57,260
your researches for a review, or at any rate, as the hinged center for

687
00:46:57,260 --> 00:47:01,610
an electrical article probably to be published by the quarterly.

688
00:47:01,610 --> 00:47:06,780
And again, she's taking on, she wants to explain this instinct to be

689
00:47:06,780 --> 00:47:11,420
the theme here, is that science needs popularizing, and

690
00:47:11,420 --> 00:47:16,150
explaining in a way that most have done and Ada also wants to do that,

691
00:47:16,150 --> 00:47:17,610
which she did, of course, brilliantly.

692
00:47:17,610 --> 00:47:18,210
It was a beauty.

693
00:47:18,210 --> 00:47:25,740
But she also wants to do it for Faraday.

694
00:47:25,740 --> 00:47:27,010
We mentioned mesmerism.

695
00:47:27,010 --> 00:47:30,620
I just want to say a word about that.

696
00:47:30,620 --> 00:47:33,520
She, another amazing range.

697
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:37,292
Ada gets interested, from a technical point of view, in mesmerism.

698
00:47:37,292 --> 00:47:43,380
Harriet very interesting, a woman journalist who traveled

699
00:47:43,380 --> 00:47:49,080
in America with a best selling book on political economy, and then, got very ill.

700
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:54,040
And incidentally, with an illness similar to what the illness that killed Ada,

701
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:55,510
some form of uterine cancer.

702
00:47:55,510 --> 00:47:59,837
And there was no way of treating this, except Opium.

703
00:47:59,837 --> 00:48:05,498
And she went and took up rooms in Newcastle,

704
00:48:05,498 --> 00:48:11,774
and she decided to try mesmerism as a treatment.

705
00:48:11,774 --> 00:48:15,792
And she says we're holed up there for three or four years,

706
00:48:15,792 --> 00:48:19,520
having a of course of mesmerism.

707
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:24,170
And the amazing thing is she was cured, she was cured.

708
00:48:24,170 --> 00:48:28,300
She came down and she lived till 1876 [INAUDIBLE].

709
00:48:28,300 --> 00:48:32,070
Now, the reasons for that cure, of course, are, that's the question.

710
00:48:32,070 --> 00:48:36,867
Is it a form of the placebo principle, very probably,

711
00:48:36,867 --> 00:48:41,680
or does it depend on the kind of disease it was and so on.

712
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:49,450
And Ada got fascinated by this but she was also interested in testing it.

713
00:48:49,450 --> 00:48:55,900
She wasn't happy just to accept the letters on mesmerism.

714
00:48:55,900 --> 00:49:01,150
And here's a passage she writes that one has to be

715
00:49:01,150 --> 00:49:05,780
careful about what she calls scientific amateurs who lack

716
00:49:05,780 --> 00:49:11,940
the really requisite extensive precaution and skepticism.

717
00:49:11,940 --> 00:49:15,624
And against the avowedly scientific,

718
00:49:15,624 --> 00:49:20,810
who are far too easily operated on an instant by enthusiasm.

719
00:49:20,810 --> 00:49:24,170
The human tendency to snatch at the occult, the mysterious and

720
00:49:24,170 --> 00:49:26,670
indefinite, rather than simple facts.

721
00:49:26,670 --> 00:49:29,130
So a bit of self criticism going on there.

722
00:49:29,130 --> 00:49:30,990
And her notes on that,

723
00:49:30,990 --> 00:49:36,770
she then links it to the work on from mesmerism to animal magnetism.

724
00:49:36,770 --> 00:49:40,930
And from that to the development of photography

725
00:49:40,930 --> 00:49:44,310
because that is a way of possibly recording

726
00:49:44,310 --> 00:49:48,330
what might be the magnetic influence which is produced by mesmerism.

727
00:49:48,330 --> 00:49:50,409
But it needs to be tested.

728
00:49:50,409 --> 00:49:54,765
What we believe that it is yet unsuspected how important a part

729
00:49:54,765 --> 00:49:58,886
photography is to play on the advance of human knowledge.

730
00:49:58,886 --> 00:50:02,466
And in the development of the occult in nature by which she doesn't mean

731
00:50:02,466 --> 00:50:03,660
what we mean.

732
00:50:03,660 --> 00:50:06,490
She simply means what is not visible.

733
00:50:06,490 --> 00:50:15,879
We need to develop instruments in order to discover that.

734
00:50:15,879 --> 00:50:21,410
Mr. Anonymous, very suitable cuz we've got four minutes.

735
00:50:21,410 --> 00:50:22,640
This extraordinary book,

736
00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:29,390
called the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, published in 1844.

737
00:50:29,390 --> 00:50:35,421
Anonymous because it put forward an early theory of evolution,

738
00:50:35,421 --> 00:50:37,774
The Examiner magazine.

739
00:50:37,774 --> 00:50:42,161
This is the first attempt that has been made to connect the natural sciences in

740
00:50:42,161 --> 00:50:43,519
a history of creation.

741
00:50:43,519 --> 00:50:46,429
And it covers the early history of mankind,

742
00:50:46,429 --> 00:50:52,730
on the mental constitution of animals and the purpose of the animated creation.

743
00:50:52,730 --> 00:50:56,360
And he mounts all kinds of arguments.

744
00:50:56,360 --> 00:51:01,010
But basically giving straight scientific explanations.

745
00:51:01,010 --> 00:51:01,815
For example,

746
00:51:01,815 --> 00:51:06,120
there's a wonderful section on the constitution of animal intelligence.

747
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:11,215
And he argues that there's a straight panorama through the simplest animal

748
00:51:11,215 --> 00:51:15,840
intelligence to human intelligence, and it can be traced through.

749
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:19,350
Now this is a very dangerous example, but that's why he was Mr.

750
00:51:19,350 --> 00:51:20,718
Anonymous, all right?

751
00:51:20,718 --> 00:51:22,510
Now, we know Ada got hold of that book.

752
00:51:22,510 --> 00:51:27,998
In fact, Babbage famously said to her husband.

753
00:51:27,998 --> 00:51:30,911
Has she read it if she hasn't actually written it?

754
00:51:30,911 --> 00:51:35,364
>> [LAUGH] >> And indeed, a man called Cedric,

755
00:51:35,364 --> 00:51:40,828
Adam Cedric, who was a very conservative reviewer academic,

756
00:51:40,828 --> 00:51:48,040
reviewed it with great insinuations that it was so outrageous, this book.

757
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:50,868
That it must have been written by a woman or.

758
00:51:50,868 --> 00:51:54,160
>> [LAUGH] >> Also a very interesting start,

759
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:59,900
this is the moment 1844, that Darwin is suddenly hustling and

760
00:51:59,900 --> 00:52:03,180
bustling into writing that preliminary essay about evolution.

761
00:52:03,180 --> 00:52:07,678
Of course he doesn't publish until 1859 but he writes very, very rapidly.

762
00:52:07,678 --> 00:52:11,940
Having read The Vestiges and there all sorts of passages.

763
00:52:11,940 --> 00:52:15,445
I'll just read you one cuz we got two minutes.

764
00:52:15,445 --> 00:52:18,170
No I won't, because I want to send the hare running.

765
00:52:18,170 --> 00:52:20,990
It was going to be about photography and

766
00:52:20,990 --> 00:52:26,840
chambers suggests that photography is a form of memory and illustration memory.

767
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,140
I would also have talked about Humboldt.

768
00:52:29,140 --> 00:52:32,810
Two minutes, we know that Ada read Cosmos.

769
00:52:32,810 --> 00:52:37,550
She was absolutely fascinated by Humboldt's idea of universal geography,

770
00:52:37,550 --> 00:52:42,300
and wrote about it, and wrote about German science in general.

771
00:52:42,300 --> 00:52:48,652
And here's the hare I want to start running, is that did she read Tennyson?

772
00:52:48,652 --> 00:52:51,159
Did she read Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850?

773
00:52:51,159 --> 00:52:53,918
But even more than that, this poem called The Princess,

774
00:52:53,918 --> 00:52:56,770
which seems to be almost entirely forgotten.

775
00:52:56,770 --> 00:53:00,145
We know that Babbage knew Tennyson, and know it for a very good,

776
00:53:00,145 --> 00:53:04,560
Babbage-like reason, that he wrote to Tennyson in 1850,

777
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:08,050
said I much enjoyed your poems.

778
00:53:08,050 --> 00:53:10,786
There's one line that worries me a bit.

779
00:53:10,786 --> 00:53:14,769
And the line is every moment dies a man,

780
00:53:14,769 --> 00:53:18,645
every moment one is born, all right?

781
00:53:18,645 --> 00:53:22,066
Babbage said [LAUGH] not yet dancing,

782
00:53:22,066 --> 00:53:27,142
there's seems to be a contradiction here because this

783
00:53:27,142 --> 00:53:31,902
implies that the human population must be static.

784
00:53:31,902 --> 00:53:33,831
>> [LAUGH] >> And

785
00:53:33,831 --> 00:53:36,847
then he makes this wonderful Babbage suggestion.

786
00:53:36,847 --> 00:53:40,259
May I suggest every moment dies a man,

787
00:53:40,259 --> 00:53:44,428
every moment one and one-sixteenth is born.

788
00:53:44,428 --> 00:53:49,128
>> [LAUGH] >> And then the absolute,

789
00:53:49,128 --> 00:53:52,265
why Babbage is so great, is one more sentence.

790
00:53:52,265 --> 00:53:55,053
He says, dear Tennyson,

791
00:53:55,053 --> 00:54:01,005
may I add that the exact figure is 1.167- >> [LAUGH]

792
00:54:01,005 --> 00:54:02,678
>> But something must, of course,

793
00:54:02,678 --> 00:54:04,361
be conceded to the laws of meter.

794
00:54:04,361 --> 00:54:09,481
>> [LAUGH] >> You know why Ada loved Babbage.

795
00:54:09,481 --> 00:54:14,148
Okay, the hare I want to run is that Tennyson published

796
00:54:14,148 --> 00:54:19,019
a almost-forgotten poem, now, called The Princess,

797
00:54:19,019 --> 00:54:22,680
which is about an extraordinary subject.

798
00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:30,550
Look at the date, 1848, which is about a university entirely of women.

799
00:54:30,550 --> 00:54:34,080
Women professors, women students, all right?

800
00:54:34,080 --> 00:54:37,470
And he explores, also, their studying a lot of science.

801
00:54:37,470 --> 00:54:40,521
There's a wonderful description of here's a lecture.

802
00:54:40,521 --> 00:54:43,330
Then we stroll, they visit

803
00:54:43,330 --> 00:54:48,790
a group of men dress up as women in order to get into university.

804
00:54:48,790 --> 00:54:52,690
And then they observe the teaching, which is formidable.

805
00:54:52,690 --> 00:54:56,970
And then we stroll for half the day through stately lecture theaters.

806
00:54:56,970 --> 00:55:00,120
Benched crescent wise.

807
00:55:00,120 --> 00:55:04,440
In each we sat, we heard the grave professor woman professor.

808
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:05,965
On the lecture slate,

809
00:55:05,965 --> 00:55:10,472
the circle rounded under female hands the slate a big black board.

810
00:55:10,472 --> 00:55:14,314
With flawless demonstration followed in a classic lecture.

811
00:55:14,314 --> 00:55:19,114
We dipped in all the total chronicles of man, the mind, the star,

812
00:55:19,114 --> 00:55:23,314
the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, electric,

813
00:55:23,314 --> 00:55:28,151
chemic laws, all the rest and whatsoever can be taught and known.

814
00:55:28,151 --> 00:55:31,956
So it is partly is satiric but it is not entirely satiric and

815
00:55:31,956 --> 00:55:35,200
there is a very interesting thing here.

816
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:41,129
The lead heroine, her name is princess Aida.

817
00:55:41,129 --> 00:55:43,833
All right, now I throw it out,

818
00:55:43,833 --> 00:55:50,115
I throw it out that was there proof that Tennyson knew about Ada?

819
00:55:50,115 --> 00:55:56,215
Certainly he knew about the great movement which was beginning for women's education.

820
00:55:56,215 --> 00:56:00,754
Queens College in London was founded in that, in fact the year he was writing for

821
00:56:00,754 --> 00:56:01,923
him, in 1847.

822
00:56:01,923 --> 00:56:07,298
And of course we know Cambridge 71 and Somerville next door in 78.

823
00:56:07,298 --> 00:56:11,871
So I let that hare run.

824
00:56:11,871 --> 00:56:15,888
And I finish with this.

825
00:56:15,888 --> 00:56:18,618
That's the third and the last, in fact,

826
00:56:18,618 --> 00:56:23,698
cuz we know it's a big error type on display, and I also was talking about it.

827
00:56:23,698 --> 00:56:28,784
Very touching photograph., of a painting.

828
00:56:28,784 --> 00:56:31,546
Pretty well reckoned fo be 1852.

829
00:56:31,546 --> 00:56:33,205
Which is very, very late.

830
00:56:33,205 --> 00:56:37,206
And there is a description of Ada having to be really held up because its so

831
00:56:37,206 --> 00:56:38,198
painful for her.

832
00:56:38,198 --> 00:56:41,821
And she's playing the piano,

833
00:56:41,821 --> 00:56:46,557
which I suggest to you is a machine in some

834
00:56:46,557 --> 00:56:51,305
way related musically to the computer.

835
00:56:51,305 --> 00:56:56,820
This is one of the last things she wrote about the future.

836
00:56:56,820 --> 00:56:59,454
She's dying, but she writes this.

837
00:56:59,454 --> 00:57:04,258
I have, however, the hope that my theories will be most

838
00:57:04,258 --> 00:57:10,089
harmoniously disciplined troops, consisting of vast numbers and

839
00:57:10,089 --> 00:57:16,060
marching in irresistible power to the sound of music.

840
00:57:16,060 --> 00:57:19,250
Is not this very mysterious?

841
00:57:19,250 --> 00:57:22,827
Certainly my troops must consist of numbers, or

842
00:57:22,827 --> 00:57:25,368
they can have no existence at all.

843
00:57:25,368 --> 00:57:29,687
But then what are these numbers?

844
00:57:29,687 --> 00:57:33,066
Now there is the riddle, question mark.

845
00:57:33,066 --> 00:57:33,807
All right?

846
00:57:33,807 --> 00:57:35,701
Remember, my title has a question mark.

847
00:57:35,701 --> 00:57:40,298
And I want to put two short excerpts against this.

848
00:57:40,298 --> 00:57:44,626
Remember that Ada associated Brighton with health and

849
00:57:44,626 --> 00:57:48,680
she went down to, and the sound of the sea and so on.

850
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:54,073
And she also knew David Brewster, who had written the first biography of Newton,

851
00:57:54,073 --> 00:57:56,666
first edition published in 1831.

852
00:57:56,666 --> 00:57:58,886
And it's that book, that biography,

853
00:57:58,886 --> 00:58:03,341
which makes famous this remark that you all know, but it's so lovely to read.

854
00:58:03,341 --> 00:58:07,080
And remember think of beaches, Ada.

855
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:10,520
This is Newton as quoted by David Brewster.

856
00:58:10,520 --> 00:58:13,770
I do not know what I may appear to the world.

857
00:58:13,770 --> 00:58:20,350
But to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and

858
00:58:20,350 --> 00:58:25,200
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or

859
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:29,990
a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth

860
00:58:29,990 --> 00:58:34,380
lay all undiscovered before me.

861
00:58:34,380 --> 00:58:37,780
One might want to replace boy with girl.

862
00:58:37,780 --> 00:58:40,376
And my final quote is this.

863
00:58:40,376 --> 00:58:47,210
We know that when Ada was dying, Dickens came to see her, her old friend Dickens.

864
00:58:47,210 --> 00:58:51,766
She'd read his American notes, she'd read a number of novels, but Dombey and

865
00:58:51,766 --> 00:58:53,066
Son was her favorite.

866
00:58:53,066 --> 00:58:58,267
And we know that he read something about the death of little Paul.

867
00:58:58,267 --> 00:59:03,027
And people usually assume that it's the moment that little Paul actually dies,

868
00:59:03,027 --> 00:59:05,068
which is a heart breaking moment.

869
00:59:05,068 --> 00:59:11,870
Little Paul is in Brighton and he can hear the sea.

870
00:59:11,870 --> 00:59:17,510
And I suggest this short passage is what Dickens read to Ada.

871
00:59:17,510 --> 00:59:20,697
Paul fell asleep and

872
00:59:20,697 --> 00:59:25,578
slept quietly for a long time.

873
00:59:25,578 --> 00:59:30,036
Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.

874
00:59:30,036 --> 00:59:35,909
His sister Florence asked him what he thought he heard.

875
00:59:35,909 --> 00:59:42,178
I want to know what it says, he answered, looking steadily into her face.

876
00:59:42,178 --> 00:59:44,419
The sea, Florey.

877
00:59:44,419 --> 00:59:48,307
What is it that it keeps on saying.

878
00:59:48,307 --> 00:59:54,878
She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves, thank you.

879
00:59:54,878 --> 01:00:04,960
[APPLAUSE]