Customer Reviews

The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Romance and Byron certainly reign supreme in this book. Science, however, is lacking. A very interesting account of Byron and his brief marriage fills the first quarter of the book. His daughter, Ada, is the subject of the other three-quarters. The book uses Ada as a biographical example of the ever-more-intense clash between Reason (science, industry, etc) and Romance (poetry, religion, arts, etc). Ada seems to be unable to cope with this conflict within herself and the author details several periods of mental illness. Though the biography of Ada Lovelace is intriguing, the main focus is on the society in which she lived. A fascinating history lesson, and an eye-opening look into a hitherto neglected woman. That said, there are quiet a few mispellings (not unusual for a first edition). If you are interested in the period, Byron, or love biographies - this is a good choice. If your bent runs to the specific scientific contributions or more widely to a reflection on the conflict between Romance and Reason, you might try another work such as the Calculating Passion of Ada Byron or Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers (though neither of those includes the actual program she wrote) and Victorian Minds/a Study of Intellectuals in Crisis and Ideologies in Transition or In Pursuit of a Scientific Culture : Science, Art, and Society in the Victorian Age.

More than just a biography of Ada Lovelace Byron, this is a narrative of the social setting of early 19th century England. In the span of under 4 decades of Ada's life, Charles Babbage had demonstrated his Difference Engine with a working model, created the design for his Analytical Engine, many scientists were performing experiments related to electricity and magnetism, and some were dabbling in their relationship to the human mind, the great railway system emerged with the steam powered engine making distances shorter and travel less of a hardship. The debates surrounding progress of science versus keeping the tranquility of nature undisturbed are well represented in this narrative.

The story covers a lot of the scandals of incest associated with Byron and his separation from his wife - this separation dominated Ada's life and had far-reaching effects on her children as well. Ada's mother Annabella - Lady Byron comes across as a domineering, influential, cruel and manipulative woman.

Speculation, reconstruction, historical evidence all play their parts in this most fascinating story of the "Enchantress of Numbers" as Ada came to be known. This well written biography talks about Ada's early interest in flying and other "impossible" projects, absorption with mesmerism, phrenology, and above all, her quest for tying the cold mathematical world (of her mother) to the hot, passionate, poetic world of her father. Due to the unique legacy of her parents, Ada sees her purpose in life as one of somehow reconciling the two disparate worlds.

Despite her mother's best efforts to keep Byronic passions out of Ada's personality, those are what Ada naturally leans towards, as is evident from her failed elopement in her teens, then several "episodes" with men at various points in her life, and her obsession with gambling, her (medically prescribed) consumption of laudanum / opium, and subsequent addiction. Her professional relationship with several imminent scientists including Charles Babbage, her writing of "notes" on scientific subjects, study of mathematics in her adulthood, her desperation to immerse herself in science in order to avoid her father's legacy - in spite of all her efforts Ada proves to be a Byron more than a Milbanke (her mother's maiden name).

The human story is more in evidence than the story of a scientific or mathematical mind. So if you are looking for just facts and details related to Ada as a scientist or "first computer programmer" this book will not be enough.

As a historian of science and technology, and also a person very interested in computer science and fascinated by poetry as well, this book looked like a full 5 stars at first. Like some of the other reviewers, I felt swamped by the details of Ada's emotional life; yet, there are flashes of brilliance where the author makes a clear connection between her social position, her interior life as we can best judge it, and her pursuits. I wonder if there would have been a better way to organize the book; as it stands now, the book is almost purely narrative (with some asides and flashbacks), and appears to be aimed at the popular reader with a seasoning of technical information to goad the more serious critic into reading on. On the positive side, I was pleased to read a clarification of Ada's role in the Babbage Difference Engine's precocious presentation. And at times, the story was fascinating. Other times, it was just plain soggy.

Who better than Ada Byron can represent the turn from Romanticism to Victorian age in England? Ada, the heiress of the great poet Lord Byron has not only lived in such transitory epoch, but Passion and Science were running in her very own blood. She was brought up by her mother, Lady Byron, and initiated by her to mathematical and rational studies, everything that would keep Ada as far as possible from the tenebrous, irrational, dangerous and very passionate style of life of her father. This life style is what had led to the separation after only one year of merriage, between Lord and Lady Byron accompained by scandals grief and resentment. Lady Byron's reaction to it was to try to repress Ada's paternal romantic vein with science. This will bring Ada to be in contact with the best scientists of the moment and even to be remembered as the first computer programmer, but won't preclude her from being a real Byron...

Ada Lovelace had a rich intellectual life.

As a huge disservice to her, this book is one extended gossip column of speculation and opinion about her personal life and that of her parents. In contrast, only a few pages are devoted to the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine.

At first I thought the author was gossiping about her parents as what he considered a necessary background to understanding Ada, so I kept reading, hoping to get to the substance of the book soon-- but the gossip never stopped, right through the description of her death.

If you too have a rich intellectual life, you will enjoy this book as much as you enjoy reading gossip about celebrities in the National Enquirer.

We will forever wonder if Charles Babbage could have given the computer age a jump start of a century. His brilliant designs for intricate and complicated calculating machines included the never-built Analytical Engine, which would have had a memory and a processor like our electronic versions, and would have run on punched cards, programmable and flexible enough to vary its routine through the If-Then steps familiar to any programmer. It never got funded because others were not able to envision just how singularly useful the gadget could have been, but Babbage had one friend and interpreter who knew the potential of his creation, and who handed the world a prescient account of what this computer might be expected to do.

Her name was Ada Lovelace, and although her ties to Babbage and his machine give her a connection to our century, she was a sensation in her own times by right of birth. As told in the exciting biography _The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron's Daughter_ (McGraw-Hill) by Benjamin Woolley, everyone knew about Ada because she was the one child of Lord and Lady Byron. Their stormy marriage had endured only eleven months when Ada was born, and a month later, Lady Byron left him; he left for the continent, never to see his daughter again. Lady Byron was motivated ever after to vindicate herself against Byron, and she raised Ada to be a soldier in this cause; she tried to make sure that the child was raised on mathematics to suppress imagination and keep any elements of the Byronic temperament from breaking out.

Raising Ada was thus a science experiment, one that didn't work. She remained curious about her father, and as she got older, she was convinced that she had genius from him and was impelled to express it. She couldn't do it through mathematics, as despite all the intense training, she wasn't a mathematician. But she was introduced to Babbage, and in 1840, set out to translate a paper he had presented on his Analytical Engine in Italy. She didn't just translate, but with Babbage's help, she made her own notes on the meaning of the computer and what it could and could not do, amazingly prescient for her time.

Woolley has not only given a fine biography of a limited woman who happened to be at the center of events that presaged our future. He has given capsule biographies of Lord and Lady Byron, Babbage, and many others who were connected with her. Furthermore, he has given historic notes on phases that touched Ada's life, such as phrenology and mesmerism, which are extremely interesting and valuable, and his argument that the Analytical Engine could not catch on because the Victorian world was not ready for the computer is fascinating. Even feminists and cyberhistorians who want to make Ada something she wasn't (and there are many of these) should be thrilled with this portrait of what she really was.

Every computer programmer knows (or should) that Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer, honored with the name of the DoD's official programming language. What I didn't know was that she was the daughter of Byron, the poet.

Her parents were a very strange match, actually: Byron the flamboyant Romantic poet and Annabella Millbanke, a coldly rational woman he dubbed "the Princess of Parallelograms." Their relationship was a brief one, followed by a bitter estrangement, but it produced a daughter, Ada.

Ada was raised exclusively by her mother, seemingly more as a science project - a demonstration of rational childraising principles - than as anything involving parental affection. Not surprisingly, she grew up to be a brilliant woman prone to nervous disorders which, when combined with attempts at treatment, led to a short life, with her dying at 37.

The focus of this book is set by the dichotomy between science and poetry exemplified by Byron and Annabella. The time period is one of extraordinary technical advancement, with the locomotive and the telegraph shrinking the world in a way that even our jet planes and satellite links can't compare. Some embraced this revolution, even some of the poets, while others rejected it.

Those like me who came to this book looking for a detailed account of Ada and her association with Babbage and his Difference Engine will come away disappointed. It is indeed covered, and Woolley describes Ada's monograph on the principles of the Engine as being a hundred years ahead of its time. But after providing a copious lead-in (to such an extent that Annabella seems as much the subject as Ada), he quickly moves on to the latter part of her life.

Still, this is an interesting book about a fascinating age and fascinating people.

I bailed out of this about a third of the way through, having gotten extremely frustrated waiting for the author to discuss Ada Lovelace. She never was as vividly portrayed as her parents; I have learned more about her from snippets in books about Victorian intellectual life. Even when she is on stage, it is as the puppet of her domineering mother - the incidents are at least as much about Lady Byron as about Ada. I suggest that my review title would be a more accurate description of the contents. Or perhaps, the Martyrdom of Lord Byron at the Hands of His Demented Wife.

It appears that the author's real interest is Lord Byron, who appears in what is supposedly a biography of his daughter more than can be justified, since he had virtually no involvement in her life after the shipwreck of his marriage. I am somewhat skeptical about how good a father Byron would have been in any case - writing touching lines about the loss of one's child is a far cry from the actual inconveniences of being a parent. This really isn't the point. Byron must have haunted Ada's life: he was famous, and Woolley would have it that cleansing his daughter of any similarities was the obsession of Lady Byron's life. But this wasn't the flesh-and-blood Byron, but society's and Lady Byron's view of him. Woolley rambles on about his doings that were probably irrelevant to Ada. Meanwhile, she is a dimly glimpsed cipher.

Despite the one star, this might be an interesting book for someone who wants to read about Byron and his marriage, particularly a reader who isn't expecting something else.

It's a pity that the Byrons' marriage was such a disaster, but really, I picked this up to learn about Ada Lovelace, not how vicious unhappy marriages can get. For that purpose, an article would have sufficed.