Perhaps Ada Lovelace’s life was foreordained to be extraordinary. She was born the only legitimate child of the renowned Romantic poet Lord Byron and the fiery abolitionist reformer Annabella Milbanke (or Lady Byron) a couple who split soon after Ada’s birth amid swirling allegations and rumors of homosexuality, incest, and insanity on the part of Lord Byron. Although traditionally, at the time, the husband would have had full rights to his child, Lady Byron was the one to take responsibility for the child and raise her upon her former husband’s permanent exit from England after public favor turned against him.

Lady Byron’s feelings for her ex-husband carried over to her treatment of Ada. She spent little time bonding with her daughter, leaving the primary childcare to Ada’s grandmother and her nurse, and referring to her daughter as “it.” However, despite this complicated relationship, Lady Byron took Ada’s education very seriously – providing her with opportunities for academic success far beyond what would usually be accessible to women during this time period. Maybe this was with the hope that education would enable Ada to escape her father’s genetics, and not yield to the insanity that Lady Byron believed plagued him: Byron, too, expressed concern that Ada would turn out like him in his letters to his former wife. However, Ada would never know her father: by the time she turned eight, he had passed away.