Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build The First Computer
On the suggestion of Charles Wheatstone, a scientist and family friend, Ada translated Menabrea’s paper from the original French into English for a published digest, Scientific Memoirs, which specialised in foreign scientific papers. Ada’s French was proficient, and under Wheatstone’s supervision the translation was duly done. It seems that Babbage was ill in the autumn of that year, and the translation was presented to him as a fait accompli early in 1843. He recalls the event some twenty years later in his autobiography, Passages:
Some time after the appearance of [Menabrea’s] memoir … the late Countess of Lovelace informed me that she had translated the memoir of Menabrea. I asked why she had not herself written an original paper on the subject with which she was so intimately acquainted? To this Lady Lovelace replied that the thought had not occurred to her. I then suggested that she should add some notes to Menabrea’s memoir; an idea which was immediately adopted.
Ada, unleashed, threw herself into the expansion of Menabrea’s article, and a frenetic collaboration with Babbage followed. Letters, notes and messages flew between them, and consultations in London were frequent. Ada worked with frantic energy. She became demanding, bossy, coquettish and irritable. She badgered Babbage for explanations about the operation of the Analytical Engine, reprimanded him for carelessness in mixing up her drafts, and gave him stern instructions, threatening him with her annoyance if he did not comply.
--Doron Swade