Here are some resources/links you might find useful. I think it’s a good idea to not think just in terms of the day itself, but of how you can build on it for future lessons.

A video by the British Library

A letter from Lovelace to Babbage

Letter from Ada Lovelace to Charles Babbage. From the British Library. Licence: Public Domain

Thinking machines: stories from the history of computing

This is a great archive of information from the Science Museum in London. When it comes to teaching any subject, "hands on" is definitely a great way of engaging kids. This especially applies to teaching computing, obviously. But I am talking about making the past come alive.

When I was teaching Economics, one day in a local market I happened to come across a stall selling bank notes from the German hyperinflation era -- you know, when a wheelbarrow full of money was less valuable than the wheelbarrow itself. These were going for a song, and so I bought them, put them in one of those display books that artists and other creatives use to present their ideas to potential clients, and then took that into school.

I taught a lesson about inflation while the students took turns to look at these bank notes of impossible denominations -- notes that had been used by real people. The students were fascinated.

After I'd switched to teaching Computing, I had a similar experience when I printed off a picture of Eniac and showed the kids what computers used to look like. Far from being something you could have on your desk, they were things you could walk around in!

ENIAC. U.S. Army Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Picture credit for Eniac: This image is a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eniac.jpg

Introducing Lovelace Into Your Classroom

Unless you have powers far beyond those required for teaching, you won't be able to invite Lovelace to your school to talk to your pupils. However, you can do the next best thing by showing them a photo of that letter:

Using artefacts from the past really helps to bring a lesson alive, in my experience. In one school I worked in, I managed to persuade the headteacher to let me get rid of several ancient computers: a suite of 486Zs and a bank of mini computers. However, I kept a 486Z, a 386Z and one of the mini computers. Using them alongside other items, such as 5.25" disks, I set up a mini computing history exhibition at the back of my classroom. The kids found it fascinating.

Another example: when I taught Economics, I brought in a collection of real banknotes from the German hyperinflation of the 1920s. It's one thing being told about inflation; it's quite another handling an actual 100 million mark note and being told it would buy the owner a loaf of bread -- if they were lucky.

I think having real objects, or at least photos of real objects, helps to place the subject in context. Getting back to computing and education technology, we think of "coding" as something new and modern, but to see that somebody thought of it over 100 years ago is quite something.

Ada's Algorithm: How Lord Byron's Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched The Digital Age through the Poetry of Numbers

Click the image to see this book on Amazon (affiliate link)

This is a biography of Ada, and highlights the astonishing grasp of the concept of computer programming before computers had been invented. In a nutshell, Charles Babbage saw his Analytical Engine as an automated calculator that would be able to work with fractions (in effect), but didn't really get beyond that. Lovelace, on the other hand, reasoned that if a machine could manipulate numbers, then it would be able to manipulate other kinds of symbols too. She even suggested that music could be encoded by the machine.

Ada's Algorithm, by James Essinger, goes into minute detail, not just of Ada's life but of her parents' lives before she was born. It is, as it happens, relevant, but I did find the detail somewhat irritating. I read it on a Kindle, and it was not until I reached the 48% mark that the author started to address Ada's appreciation of what Babbage's machine might be programmed to do.

While the amount of detail earlier in the book is, I feel, an obstacle to enjoyment, the detail once we get on to Ada's relationship with the Analytical Engine is absolutely riveting.

Reading the almost line by line account of Ada's notes on the article she translated (her notes were longer than the article itself), I could really appreciate the description often applied to Ada Lovelace, that of being the world's first computer programmer.

Three thoughts struck me while reading the book:

First, a sense of outrage that in her day women were thought to be too fragile, both physically and mentally, to study maths and science. I know that we're supposed to take into account the fact or the possibility that people in those days weren't as enlightened as we are now, but I think that's a load of hogwash quite frankly. There are pompous, misogynistic and ignorant people in any age. The scandal is that 200 years ago that was thought to be acceptable.

Second, I've read several books about the development of programming or its variations, such as about the Enigma machine at Bletchley Park, and Ada Lovelace is often either not mentioned at all or just mentioned in a footnote. It makes me feel – and I realise that this sounds ridiculous but I'll say it anyway – it makes me feel angry on her behalf.

Third, it really is a jaw-dropping thought that we might have developed the computer more than a century before we did, had Babbage allowed Lovelace to take over the PR and management associated with the Analytical machine. Mind you, I am not sure that is a realistic idea, because in those days each part had to be made by hand, and there were thousands of them. Perhaps, though, computing as a practical science might have been established long before it eventually was.

This is definitely a book worth buying, even if you decide to skip almost the first half of the book.

Star rating: 3/5

This review was first published in the Digital Education newsletter.

Review: The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage

When she grew up, Lovelace was one of the few people – possibly the only person – to fully understand the possibilities of Babbage's Analytical Engine. Indeed, she is credited with writing what was, in effect, the first computer program.

Unfortunately, Ada Lovelace died young, at the age of 36, and Charles Babbage never built his Analytical Engine. Had Lovelace lived, and had Babbage actually built his invention, the computer would have been invented a hundred years before it was.

Isn't that an astonishing thought?!

That's where it ended – in this universe. Using the age-old sci-fi trick of positing multiple alternate realities, Padua imagines what might have happened had things turned out differently. This is all done through the medium of a graphic novel, and plenty of humour.

Now, you might think "Who wants to read an imaginary tale? What's the point?". And you would be right, were it not for Padua's meticulous research. This enables her to build on real events, and to extrapolate from them, as the copious notes make clear.

In fact, even if you don't like graphic novels, this book is worth buying for the notes alone. There is also an in-depth illustrated exposition of how the Analytical Engine was designed to work.

I found a number of things fascinating. First, I hadn't realised until I'd read this book that Lovelace anticipated, by a decade, Boolean Logic. I also hadn't realised how close the Analytical Engine was to a modern computer in terms of the way the Analytical Engine was supposed to work. For example, it used a Store – what we would call Memory.

I've always thought of Babbage's Difference Engine as a massive calculator, which is what it was, of course. What I didn't know until I read this book was that Lovelace realised that the principles upon which it worked could be applied to any form of data – including music. She wrote that if sounds were capable of being expressed in notation that could be understood by the "Engine",

"the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

The only slight irritation is that the footnotes and endnotes are so multitudinous that reading them interrupts the flow of the novel itself. I'm not sure that anything could be done about that though.

I always think that one indication of a good book is that it makes you want to explore the subject further. Reading this one has made me want to read Lovelace's original paper and read her biography. I'd also like to find out more about Charles Babbage. I think I'll start by reading his autobiography.

If, like me, you enjoy reading comics and graphic novels, and are interested in Computing, you may already be familiar with the blog called 2D Goggles Or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. This relates the story of the development of the Difference Engine and other aspects of the lives of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. Their adventures are based on (mostly) real events and episodes, with a lot of poetic licence thrown in! I thoroughly recommend reading the adventures, and I suggest encouraging your students to do so too. It will help them learn about the development of computing and computer programming in an enjoyable way.

This book would make an excellent introduction to computing ideas for both teachers and pupils. Even if you can't understand all of the science involved (some of the footnotes are challenging to the layperson), the humour and the graphics will carry you through.

Rating: 4.5/5

One line review: This is a must for your classroom bookshelf.

Concluding remarks

I hope you have found these thoughts and links useful.