text:
Ada Lovelace

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.

Ada Byron was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and reformer Anne Isabella Milbanke. All Lovelace's half-siblings, Lord Byron's other children, were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever. He died in Greece when Ada was eight. Her mother was anxious about her upbringing and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Ada remained interested in him, naming her two sons Byron and Gordon. Upon her death, she was buried next to him at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.

Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)".

When she was eighteen, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, who is known as "the father of computers". She was in particular interested in Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Lovelace first met him on 5 June 1833, when she and her mother attended one of Charles Babbage's Saturday night soirées with their mutual friend, and Ada's private tutor, Mary Somerville.

Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article by the military engineer Luigi Menabrea (later Prime Minister of Italy) about the Analytical Engine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of seven notes, simply called "Notes".

Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from 1837 to 1840 contain the first programs for the engine. She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Her mindset of "poetical science" led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine (as shown in her notes), examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool. The coding language Ada is named for her.

Childhood
Lord Byron expected his child to be a "glorious boy" and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl. The child was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called "Ada" by Byron himself. On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron's command, Lady Byron left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory, taking their five-week-old daughter with her. Although English law at the time granted full custody of children to the father in cases of separation, Lord Byron made no attempt to claim his parental rights, but did request that his sister keep him informed of Ada's welfare.

On 21 April, Lord Byron signed the deed of separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later. Aside from an acrimonious separation, Lady Byron continued throughout her life to make allegations about her husband's immoral behaviour. This set of events made Lovelace infamous in Victorian society. Ada did not have a relationship with her father. He died in 1824 when she was eight years old. Her mother was the only significant parental figure in her life. Lovelace was not shown the family portrait of her father until her 20th birthday.

Lovelace did not have a close relationship with her mother. She was often left in the care of her maternal grandmother Judith, Hon. Lady Milbanke, who doted on her. However, because of societal attitudes of the time—which favoured the husband in any separation, with the welfare of any child acting as mitigation—Lady Byron had to present herself as a loving mother to the rest of society. This included writing anxious letters to Lady Milbanke about her daughter's welfare, with a cover note saying to retain the letters in case she had to use them to show maternal concern. In one letter to Lady Milbanke, she referred to her daughter as "it": "I talk to it for your satisfaction, not my own, and shall be very glad when you have it under your own." Lady Byron had her teenage daughter watched by close friends for any sign of moral deviation. Lovelace dubbed these observers the "Furies" and later complained they exaggerated and invented stories about her.

Lovelace was often ill, beginning in early childhood. At the age of eight, she experienced headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, something which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831, she was able to walk with crutches. Despite the illnesses, she developed her mathematical and technological skills.

"When Ada was twelve years old, this future 'Lady Fairy', as Charles Babbage affectionately called her, decided she wanted to fly. Ada Byron went about the project methodically, thoughtfully, with imagination and passion. Her first step, in February 1828, was to construct wings. She investigated different material and sizes. She considered various materials for the wings: paper, oilsilk, wires, and feathers. She examined the anatomy of birds to determine the right proportion between the wings and the body. She decided to write a book, Flyology, illustrating, with plates, some of her findings. She decided what equipment she would need; for example, a compass, to 'cut across the country by the most direct road', so that she could surmount mountains, rivers, and valleys. Her final step was to integrate steam with the 'art of flying'."

Ada Byron had an affair with a tutor in early 1833. She tried to elope with him after she was caught, but the tutor's relatives recognised her and contacted her mother. Lady Byron and her friends covered the incident up to prevent a public scandal. Lovelace never met her younger half-sister, Allegra, the daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont. Allegra died in 1822 at the age of five. Lovelace did have some contact with Elizabeth Medora Leigh, the daughter of Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh, who purposely avoided Lovelace as much as possible when introduced at court.

Adult years

Lovelace became close friends with her tutor Mary Somerville, who introduced her to Charles Babbage in 1833. She had a strong respect and affection for Somerville, and they corresponded for many years. Other acquaintances included the scientists Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens. She was presented at Court at the age of seventeen "and became a popular belle of the season" in part because of her "brilliant mind". By 1834 Ada was a regular at Court and started attending various events. She danced often and was able to charm many people, and was described by most people as being dainty, although John Hobhouse, Byron's friend, described her as "a large, coarse-skinned young woman but with something of my friend's features, particularly the mouth". This description followed their meeting on 24 February 1834 in which Ada made it clear to Hobhouse that she did not like him, probably due to her mother's influence, which led her to dislike all of her father's friends. This first impression was not to last, and they later became friends.

On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King. They had three homes: Ockham Park, Surrey; a Scottish estate on Loch Torridon in Ross-shire; and a house in London. They spent their honeymoon at Ashley Combe near Porlock Weir, Somerset, which had been built as a hunting lodge in 1799 and was improved by King in preparation for their honeymoon. It later became their summer retreat and was further improved during this time. From 1845, the family's main house was Horsley Towers, built in the Tudorbethan fashion by the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Charles Barry,  and later greatly enlarged to Lovelace's own designs.

They had three children: Byron (born 1836); Anne Isabella (called Annabella, born 1837); and Ralph Gordon (born 1839). Immediately after the birth of Annabella, Lady King experienced "a tedious and suffering illness, which took months to cure". Ada was a descendant of the extinct Barons Lovelace and in 1838, her husband was made Earl of Lovelace and Viscount Ockham, meaning Ada became the Countess of Lovelace. In 1843–44, Ada's mother assigned William Benjamin Carpenter to teach Ada's children and to act as a "moral" instructor for Ada. He quickly fell for her and encouraged her to express any frustrated affections, claiming that his marriage meant he would never act in an "unbecoming" manner. When it became clear that Carpenter was trying to start an affair, Ada cut it off.

In 1841, Lovelace and Medora Leigh (the daughter of Lord Byron's half-sister Augusta Leigh) were told by Ada's mother that Ada's father was also Medora's father. On 27 February 1841, Ada wrote to her mother: "I am not in the least astonished. In fact, you merely confirm what I have for years and years felt scarcely a doubt about, but should have considered it most improper in me to hint to you that I in any way suspected." She did not blame the incestuous relationship on Byron, but instead blamed Augusta Leigh: "I fear she is more inherently wicked than he ever was." In the 1840s, Ada flirted with scandals: firstly, from a relaxed approach to extra-marital relationships with men, leading to rumours of affairs; and secondly, from her love of gambling. She apparently lost more than £3,000 on the horses during the later 1840s. The gambling led to her forming a syndicate with male friends, and an ambitious attempt in 1851 to create a mathematical model for successful large bets. This went disastrously wrong, leaving her thousands of pounds in debt to the syndicate, forcing her to admit it all to her husband. She had a shadowy relationship with Andrew Crosse's son John from 1844 onwards. John Crosse destroyed most of their correspondence after her death as part of a legal agreement. She bequeathed him the only heirlooms her father had personally left to her. During her final illness, she would panic at the idea of the younger Crosse being kept from visiting her.

Education
From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life. Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Byron was one of the reasons that Ada was taught mathematics from an early age. She was privately educated in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King, and Mary Somerville, the noted 19th-century researcher and scientific author. In the 1840s, the mathematician Augustus De Morgan extended her "much help in her mathematical studies" including study of advanced calculus topics including the "numbers of Bernoulli" (that formed her celebrated algorithm for Babbage's Analytical Engine). In a letter to Lady Byron, De Morgan suggested that Ada's skill in mathematics might lead her to become "an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence".

Lovelace often questioned basic assumptions through integrating poetry and science. Whilst studying differential calculus, she wrote to De Morgan:

"I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one's elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar."

Lovelace believed that intuition and imagination were critical to effectively applying mathematical and scientific concepts. She valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring "the unseen worlds around us".

Death

Lovelace died at the age of 36 on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer. The illness lasted several months, in which time Annabella took command over whom Ada saw, and excluded all of her friends and confidants. Under her mother's influence, Ada had a religious transformation and was coaxed into repenting of her previous conduct and making Annabella her executor. She lost contact with her husband after confessing something to him on 30 August which caused him to abandon her bedside. It is not known what she told him. She was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.

Work
Throughout her life, Lovelace was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including phrenology and mesmerism. After her work with Babbage, Lovelace continued to work on other projects. In 1844, she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings ("a calculus of the nervous system"). She never achieved this, however. In part, her interest in the brain came from a long-running pre-occupation, inherited from her mother, about her "potential" madness. As part of her research into this project, she visited the electrical engineer Andrew Crosse in 1844 to learn how to carry out electrical experiments. In the same year, she wrote a review of a paper by Baron Karl von Reichenbach, Researches on Magnetism, but this was not published and does not appear to have progressed past the first draft. In 1851, the year before her cancer struck, she wrote to her mother mentioning "certain productions" she was working on regarding the relation of maths and music.

Lovelace first met Charles Babbage in June 1833, through their mutual friend Mary Somerville. Later that month, Babbage invited Lovelace to see the prototype for his difference engine. She became fascinated with the machine and used her relationship with Somerville to visit Babbage as often as she could. Babbage was impressed by Lovelace's intellect and analytic skills. He called her "The Enchantress of Number". In 1843, he wrote to her:

"Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible its multitudinous Charlatans—every thing in short but the Enchantress of Number."

During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea's article on Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. Explaining the Analytical Engine's function was a difficult task; many other scientists did not grasp the concept and the British establishment had shown little interest in it. Lovelace's notes even had to explain how the Analytical Engine differed from the original Difference Engine. Her work was well received at the time; the scientist Michael Faraday described himself as a supporter of her writing.

The notes are around three times longer than the article itself and include (in Note G), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine, which might have run correctly had it ever been built (only Babbage's Difference Engine has been built, completed in London in 2002). Based on this work, Lovelace is now considered by many to be the first computer programmer  and her method has been called the world's first computer program. Others dispute this because some of Charles Babbage's earlier writings could be considered computer programs.

Note G also contains Lovelace's dismissal of artificial intelligence. She wrote that "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths." This objection has been the subject of much debate and rebuttal, for example by Alan Turing in his paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Most modern computer scientists argue that this view is outdated and that computer software can develop in ways that cannot necessarily be anticipated by programmers.

Lovelace and Babbage had a minor falling out when the papers were published, when he tried to leave his own statement (criticising the government's treatment of his Engine) as an unsigned preface, which could have been mistakenly interpreted as a joint declaration. When Taylor's Scientific Memoirs ruled that the statement should be signed, Babbage wrote to Lovelace asking her to withdraw the paper. This was the first that she knew he was leaving it unsigned, and she wrote back refusing to withdraw the paper. The historian Benjamin Woolley theorised that "His actions suggested he had so enthusiastically sought Ada's involvement, and so happily indulged her ... because of her 'celebrated name'." Their friendship recovered, and they continued to correspond. On 12 August 1851, when she was dying of cancer, Lovelace wrote to him asking him to be her executor, though this letter did not give him the necessary legal authority. Part of the terrace at Worthy Manor was known as Philosopher's Walk; it was there that Lovelace and Babbage were reputed to have walked while discussing mathematical principles.

First published computer program

In 1840, Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his Analytical Engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer and the future Prime Minister of Italy, transcribed Babbage's lecture into French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève in October 1842. Babbage's friend Charles Wheatstone commissioned Ada Lovelace to translate Menabrea's paper into English. She then augmented the paper with notes, which were added to the translation. Ada Lovelace spent the better part of a year doing this, assisted with input from Babbage. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published in the September 1843 edition of Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL.

Ada Lovelace's notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In Note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada Lovelace has often been cited as the first computer programmer for this reason. The engine was never completed and so her program was never tested.

In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B. V. Bowden's Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a computer and software.

Insight into potential of computing devices
In her notes, Ada Lovelace emphasised the difference between the Analytical Engine and previous calculating machines, particularly its ability to be programmed to solve problems of any complexity. She realised the potential of the device extended far beyond mere number crunching. In her notes, she wrote:

"[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

This analysis was an important development from previous ideas about the capabilities of computing devices and anticipated the implications of modern computing one hundred years before they were realised. Walter Isaacson ascribes Ada's insight regarding the application of computing to any process based on logical symbols to an observation about textiles: "When she saw some mechanical looms that used punchcards to direct the weaving of beautiful patterns, it reminded her of how Babbage's engine used punched cards to make calculations." This insight is seen as significant by writers such as Betty Toole and Benjamin Woolley, as well as the programmer John Graham-Cumming, whose project Plan 28 has the aim of constructing the first complete Analytical Engine.

According to the historian of computing and Babbage specialist Doron Swade:

"Ada saw something that Babbage in some sense failed to see. In Babbage's world his engines were bound by number...What Lovelace saw...was that number could represent entities other than quantity. So once you had a machine for manipulating numbers, if those numbers represented other things, letters, musical notes, then the machine could manipulate symbols of which number was one instance, according to rules. It is this fundamental transition from a machine which is a number cruncher to a machine for manipulating symbols according to rules that is the fundamental transition from calculation to computation—to general-purpose computation—and looking back from the present high ground of modern computing, if we are looking and sifting history for that transition, then that transition was made explicitly by Ada in that 1843 paper."

Distinction between mechanism and logical structure
Lovelace recognized the difference between the details of the computing mechanism, as covered in an 1834 article on the Difference Engine, and the logical structure of the Analytical Engine, on which the article she was reviewing dwelt. She noted that different specialists might be required in each area.

The [1834 article] chiefly treats it under its mechanical aspect, entering but slightly into the mathematical principles of which that engine is the representative, but giving, in considerable length, many details of the mechanism and contrivances by means of which it tabulates the various orders of differences. M. Menabrea, on the contrary, exclusively developes the analytical view; taking it for granted that mechanism is able to perform certain processes, but without attempting to explain how; and devoting his whole attention to explanations and illustrations of the manner in which analytical laws can be so arranged and combined as to bring every branch of that vast subject within the grasp of the assumed powers of mechanism. It is obvious that, in the invention of a calculating engine, these two branches of the subject are equally essential fields of investigation... They are indissolubly connected, though so different in their intrinsic nature, that perhaps the same mind might not be likely to prove equally profound or successful in both.

Controversy over contribution
Though Lovelace is often referred to as the first computer programmer, some biographers, computer scientists and historians of computing suggest otherwise.

Allan G. Bromley, in the 1990 article Difference and Analytical Engines: "All but one of the programs cited in her notes had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier. The exception was prepared by Babbage for her, although she did detect a 'bug' in it. Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so."

Bruce Collier wrote that Lovelace "made a considerable contribution to publicizing the Analytical Engine, but there is no evidence that she advanced the design or theory of it in any way".

Eugene Eric Kim and Betty Alexandra Toole consider it "incorrect" to regard Lovelace as the first computer programmer, as Babbage wrote the initial programs for his Analytical Engine, although the majority were never published. Bromley notes several dozen sample programs prepared by Babbage between 1837 and 1840, all substantially predating Lovelace's notes. Dorothy K. Stein regards Lovelace's notes as "more a reflection of the mathematical uncertainty of the author, the political purposes of the inventor, and, above all, of the social and cultural context in which it was written, than a blueprint for a scientific development".

Doron Swade has said that Ada only published the first computer program instead of actually writing it, but agrees that she was the only person to see the potential of the analytical engine as a machine capable of expressing entities other than quantities.

In his book, Idea Makers, Stephen Wolfram defends Lovelace's contributions. While acknowledging that Babbage wrote several unpublished algorithms for the Analytical Engine prior to Lovelace's notes, Wolfram argues that "there's nothing as sophisticated—or as clean—as Ada's computation of the Bernoulli numbers. Babbage certainly helped and commented on Ada's work, but she was definitely the driver of it." Wolfram then suggests that Lovelace's main achievement was to distill from Babbage's correspondence "a clear exposition of the abstract operation of the machine—something which Babbage never did".

Commemoration

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980 and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, MIL-STD-1815, was given the number of the year of her birth.

In 1981, the Association for Women in Computing inaugurated its Ada Lovelace Award. , the British Computer Society (BCS) has awarded the Lovelace Medal, and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students. BCSWomen sponsors the Lovelace Colloquium, an annual conference for women undergraduates. Ada College is a further-education college in Tottenham Hale, London, focused on digital skills.

Ada Lovelace Day is an annual event celebrated on the second Tuesday of October, which began in 2009. Its goal is to "... raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering, and maths," and to "create new role models for girls and women" in these fields. Events have included Wikipedia edit-a-thons with the aim of improving the representation of women on Wikipedia in terms of articles and editors to reduce unintended gender bias on Wikipedia.

The Ada Initiative was a non-profit organisation dedicated to increasing the involvement of women in the free culture and open source movements.

A specialist technical college, for pupils 16-19, in England is named "Ada, the National College for Digital Skills", it has campuses in Whitechapel, Tottenham Hale and Manchester.

The building of the department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol is called the Ada Lovelace Building.

The Engineering in Computer Science and Telecommunications College building in Zaragoza University is called the Ada Byron Building. The computer centre in the village of Porlock, near where Lovelace lived, is named after her. Ada Lovelace House is a council-owned building in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, near where Lovelace spent her infancy.

In 2012, a Google Doodle and blog post honoured her on her birthday.

In 2013, Ada Developers Academy was founded and named after her. The mission of Ada Developers Academy is to diversify tech by providing women and gender diverse people the skills, experience, and community support to become professional software developers to change the face of tech.

On 17 September 2013, the BBC Radio 4 biography programme Great Lives devoted an episode to Ada Lovelace; she was sponsored by TV presenter Konnie Huq.

As of November 2015, all new British passports have included an illustration of Lovelace and Babbage.

In 2017, a Google Doodle honoured her with other women on International Women's Day.

On 2 February 2018, Satellogic, a high-resolution Earth observation imaging and analytics company, launched a ÑuSat type micro-satellite named in honour of Ada Lovelace.

In March 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary for Ada Lovelace.

On 27 July 2018, Senator Ron Wyden submitted, in the United States Senate, the designation of 9 October 2018 as National Ada Lovelace Day: "To honor the life and contributions of Ada Lovelace as a leading woman in science and mathematics". The resolution (S.Res.592) was considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by unanimous consent.

In November 2020 it was announced that Trinity College Dublin whose library had previously held forty busts, all of them of men, was commissioning four new busts of women, one of whom was to be Lovelace.

In March 2022, a statue of Ada Lovelace was installed at the site of the former Ergon House in the City of Westminster, London, honoring its scientific history. The redevelopment was part of a complex with Imperial Chemical House. The statue was sculpted by Etienne and Mary Millner and based on the portrait by Margaret Sarah Carpenter. The sculpture was unveiled on International Women's Day, 2022. It stands on the 7th floor of Millbank Quarter overlooking the junction of Dean Bradley Street and Horseferry Road.

In September 2022, Nvidia announced the Ada Lovelace graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture.

In July 2023, The UK's Royal Mint issued four commemorative £2 coins in various metals to "honour the innovative contributions of computer science visionary Ada Lovelace and her legacy as a female trailblazer."

Bicentenary (2015)
The bicentenary of Ada Lovelace's birth was celebrated with a number of events, including:

 * The Ada Lovelace Bicentenary Lectures on Computability, Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, 20 December 2015 – 31 January 2016.
 * Ada Lovelace Symposium, University of Oxford, 13–14 October 2015.
 * Ada.Ada.Ada, a one-woman show about the life and work of Ada Lovelace (using an LED dress), premiered at Edinburgh International Science Festival on 11 April 2015, and continued to touring internationally to promote diversity on STEM at technology conferences, businesses, government and educational organisations.

Special exhibitions were displayed by the Science Museum in London, England and the Weston Library (part of the Bodleian Library) in Oxford, England.

Novels and plays
Lovelace is portrayed in Romulus Linney's 1977 play Childe Byron. In Tom Stoppard's 1993 play Arcadia, the precocious teenage genius Thomasina Coverly—a character "apparently based" on Ada Lovelace (the play also involves Lord Byron)—comes to understand chaos theory, and theorises the second law of thermodynamics, before either is officially recognised.

In the 1990 steampunk novel The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Lovelace delivers a lecture on the "punched cards" programme which proves Gödel's incompleteness theorems decades before their actual discovery. Lovelace and Mary Shelley as teenagers are the central characters in Jordan Stratford's steampunk series, The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.

Lovelace features in John Crowley's 2005 novel, Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, as an unseen character whose personality is forcefully depicted in her annotations and anti-heroic efforts to archive her father's lost novel.

The 2015 play Ada and the Engine by Lauren Gunderson portrays Lovelace and Charles Babbage in unrequited love, and it imagines a post-death meeting between Lovelace and her father. Lovelace and Babbage are also the main characters in Sydney Padua's webcomic and graphic novel The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. The comic features extensive footnotes on the history of Ada Lovelace, and many lines of dialogue are drawn from actual correspondence.

Lovelace is a primary character in the 2019 Big Finish Doctor Who audio play The Enchantress of Numbers, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Jane Slavin as his current companion, WPC Ann Kelso. Lovelace is played by Finty Williams.

In 2019, Lovelace is a featured character in the play STEM FEMMES by Philadelphia theater company Applied Mechanics.

Lovelace was a character in a novel in the extended Assassin's Creed series known as the Magus Conspiracy. In the book. Lovelace was involved in helping create a machine of destruction.

Film and television
In the 1997 film Conceiving Ada, a computer scientist obsessed with Ada finds a way of communicating with her in the past by means of "undying information waves".

Lovelace, identified as Ada Augusta Byron, is portrayed by Lily Lesser in the second season of The Frankenstein Chronicles. She is employed as an "analyst" to provide the workings of a life-sized humanoid automaton. The brass workings of the machine are reminiscent of Babbage's analytical engine. Her employment is described as keeping her occupied until she returns to her studies in advanced mathematics.

Lovelace and Babbage appear as characters in the second season of the ITV series Victoria (2017). Emerald Fennell portrays Lovelace in the episode, "The Green-Eyed Monster."

"Lovelace" is the name of the operating system designed by the character Cameron Howe in Halt and Catch Fire.

Lovelace features as a character in "Spyfall, Part 2", the second episode of Doctor Who, series 12, which first aired on BBC One on 5 January 2020. The character was portrayed by Sylvie Briggs, alongside characterisations of Charles Babbage and Noor Inayat Khan.

Computing and STEM

 * Ada Lovelace Day
 * A computer language, initially developed by the US Department of Defense, is called Ada.
 * The Lovelace Medal awarded by the British Computer Society (BCS).
 * The Lovelace Lectures at the BCS sponsored by the Alan Turing Institute
 * The Lovelace Lectures at Durham University.
 * The Ada Lovelace Award awarded by the Association for Women in Computing
 * The Ada Initiative supporting open technology and women is named after her.
 * Ada Lovelace Building, the engineering mathematics building at Birmingham University.
 * Ada Lovelace Building, in Exeter Science Park.
 * Ada Byron Building, in the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering at the University of Zaragoza.
 * Ada Byron Research Centre in University of Malaga Andalucía.
 * Ada Lovelace Institute a think tank dedicated to ensuring data and AI work for people and society.
 * Ada Lovelace Centre for Digital Scholarship Oxford
 * Ada Lovelace Center for Digital Humanities Berlin
 * ADA Lovelace Centre for Analytics, Data, Applications at Fraunhofer IIS originally called the ADA Lovelace Centre for Artificial Intelligence.
 * Ada Lovelace Excellence Scholarship at the University of Southampton.
 * Adafruit Industries
 * Ada Lovelace Centre part of the STFC.
 * The Cardano cryptocurrency platform, launched in 2017, uses Ada as the name for the cryptocurrency and Lovelace as the smallest sub-unit of an Ada.
 * Ada, an artwork incorporating artificial intelligence house at Microsoft's Building 99.
 * In 2021, the code name of Nvidia's GPU architecture in its RTX 4000 series is Ada Lovelace. It is the first Nvidia architecture to feature both a first and last name.
 * Ada Byron University Programming Contest

Other

 * A green plaque is to be found on Fordhook Avenue on the corner of 5 Station Parade, Uxbridge Road, Ealing
 * Blue plaques are at Mallory Park and St James' Square.
 * Ada Lovelace C of E High School in Greenford, specialising in music, digital technologies and languages.
 * Ada Lovelace House, council offices in Nottinghamshire, later proposed to be let to small business.
 * Ada Byron King Building at Nottingham Trent University
 * Ada Lovelace Suite at Seaham Hall.
 * The Lovelace Memorial is a Grade II Listed monument in Kirkby Mallory.

Publications

 * Lovelace, Ada King. Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and her Description of the First Computer. Mill Valley, CA: Strawberry Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-912647-09-8.
 * Also available on Wikisource: The Menebrea article, The notes by Ada Lovelace.
 * Also available on Wikisource: The Menebrea article, The notes by Ada Lovelace.

Publication history
Six copies of the 1843 first edition of Sketch of the Analytical Engine with Ada Lovelace's "Notes" have been located. Three are held at Harvard University, one at the University of Oklahoma, and one at the United States Air Force Academy. On 20 July 2018, the sixth copy was sold at auction to an anonymous buyer for £95,000. A digital facsimile of one of the copies in the Harvard University Library is available online.

In December 2016, a letter written by Ada Lovelace was forfeited by Martin Shkreli to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for unpaid taxes owed by Shkreli.

title: Ada Lovelace


text:
Talk:Abdul Alhazred

John dee
as apposed to bickering rhetoric like wee kids here

http://elearning.zaou.ac.zm:8060/Beliefs/Magick%20&%20Witchcraft,%20Etc/Dee,%20John%201527-1608/

a fair collection of "Dee's" works sort the chaff, harvest the wheat, post the truth or go fix the page for Peer review one is wrong

sovos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.247.182.50 (talk) 16:17, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Trolls
Someone redirected the link meant to give information on Lovecraft's ancestry to a NYTimes article on trolls. I'm too lazy to find the original link, so could someone else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.214.138.218 (talk) 23:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Mad Arab
In Lovecraft's tales the usage of "Mad Arab" is almost always capitalised as a proper noun and quotes should reflect this. The only exception to this is The Nameless City and this is when the idea of the Necronomicon and that which was to become the Cthulhu Mythos was still in the earliest stages of development. Hence The "M" should always be capitalised as Lovecraft's work uses the word not as insult or description but as a title and "Mad Arab" can be used as a synonym for Abdul Alhazred.

 * Actually, in the corrected Arkham House editions of Lovecraft's works (based on original manuscripts and early publications), the "m" is not capitalised even once. Thus, the form "Mad Arab" does not ccur at all in Lovecraft, whereas "mad Arab" does. The article should be changed accordingly.83.254.52.177 (talk) 00:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

--- All of this info about Abdul Alhazred sounds like it was created by an advertising agency to create buzz for a movie that premiered a trailer at the Transformers movie. Good job!

72.219.134.156 22:01, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Er.. you have it backwards. Alhazred was created at least 70 years ago, if not longer in Lovecraft's head.

Invisible Creature
What was the invisible creature supposed to be? A shoggoth? One of those half-children of Yog-Sothoth? I never figured that out. 71.195.86.253 (talk) 17:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Who is Abdul Alhazred
''Who is purported to be the author of the book mentioned, H. P. Lovecraft or Alhazred? Also, why should we care at all about Abdul Alhazred?''

''Because a lot of people think he may have existed, and probably for the same sorts of reasons some other misguided folk might be interested in the improbable activities of the likes of J Christ esq.... Because they are incapable of discerning the difference between fact and fantasy. ''

I think we should care because sjc does and because people care to read it, but please do tell us more about this fascinating Abdul Alhazred-character (seems like some archetype pre-renaissance arab scientist) Sjc (talk) 20:49, 11 July 2001

The reason why he should be called Abdul Hazred should be explained. Lovecraft didn't know enough about Arabic names to know that abdul is really abd-al = "servant of the" so abd-al-hazred would be "Servant of hazred" hazred="that which is coming" I think. I'm not near my dictionary. But "Abdul Alhazred" means "Servant of the the thing which is to come" I won't edit it myself because it'd be better for a native speaker to explain.

Also, is an encyclopedia really the place for criticizing Christianity? I thought it's supposed to pretend to be objective. 128.220.29.161 (talk) 20:30, 23 August 2004

Link suggestions
An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Abdul_Alhazred article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience. Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add to this page. — LinkBot 00:35, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Abdul Alhazred
Note on Abdul Alhazred: though such a form of the name would not be found in the original Arabic, in later medieval translations of the text (into Latin, etc.) you would expect the proper form of the name to be corrupted, as they pretty much invariably were corrupted in other Arab name cases. You can look upon Lovecraft's 'Abdul Alhazred' as the later medieval form of the name. It's probably not simply a case of Lovecraft mixing up his Arabic. Alexander 007 08:59, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

 * You mean like Alhazen or Alfarabius. That is what TV Tropes would call Fridge Brilliance. Of course that website did not exist when you made that comment, over a decade ago. Maybe someone will add to this "conversation" in 2025.--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 04:46, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Al Hazred's true name
I'm arab. The name "Abdul AlHazred" could not exist because of two reasons:

1) The grammatic nature of the name is incorrect. The word "Abdul" consists of "Abd" + "Al". In Arabic, they're mixed to form the word "Abdul". So if we wrote the name in the original grammatic form, it would be "Abd Al Al Hazred". And this is totally wrong. (by the way, "Abd" means "Slave" while "Al" means "The" - in English)

2) Al Hazred was known to have lived in the "Ammawi" era, i.e. During Islam. Thus, he could never be named "Abd Al Hazred" as this would be a clear denial of his belief in Allah, the name of God in Islam.

The most suggested name is: Abdullah Al Hazred.

[Abdullah = Abd + Allah] = The slave of God [Al Hazred] is just another surname.

The other curtain thing is that Al Hazrad is the real author of "The Necronomicon", and not Lovecraft or any other person Haisook (talk) 20:47, 21 August 2005

 * Curtain? Oh certain cer-tain.  Look thanks for the language lesson but you seemed to have missed the memo.  THERE IS NO "REAL" NECRONOMICON!   128.206.104.82 (talk) 18:36, 22 February 2006

 * Ok First, Whoever is the genius who thinks there is no Necronomicon, you need to do more research. ::Second, Abdul Alhazred could be his real name, seeing as how he did not share the belief in Allah as one would have you imagine. For those of you who need to brush up on your research, I suggest:

 * 1.) Donald Tyson's " Necronomicon, The Wanderings of Alhazred"

 * 2.) Simon's "Dead Names: Dark History of the Necronomicon"

 * 3.) Simon's "The Gates of the Necronomicon"
 * and before you jump to conclusions, why dont you read the book for yourself?! 4.68.249.1 (talk) 12:24, 19 February 2007

 * Because 10 minutes of research reveals that Lovecraft was the first person to mention the Necronomicon. There are no earlier references, and Lovecraft said many times that it is a book of his own invention. 216.26.131.217 (talk)  05:46, 21 April 2007

While you're translating the name, what about "Hazred"? Does that have any meaning in Arabic? It quite possibly might not (since by Lovecraft's own admission it was a name he used for himself as a child) but if it did, that would probably be good information to add to the article. 140.198.155.85 (talk) 09:37, 22 March 2007

I have read an article on the subject of Abdul Alhazreds name (and names in Lovecraftian Mythos in general) from the 4th edition of the rulebook for Call of Cthulhu. While I know this may not be a valid source, the (ficitional) writer of the document claimed that the name of "Abdul Alhazred" doesn't make sense and the real name was "Abd Al-Azred", meaning "Worshipper of the Devourer"´, and that the name has then changed over time by mistakes done by the various "translators". While none in Arabia in that time would name anyone "Worshipper of the devourer" it can be believed that abd(ul) changed his name later on when he 'realized the truth' about the universe. Again, I point out that this is a belief issued by the author of CoC and thus may not be a valid source, more a theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.32.37.3 (talk) 10:30, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Neither. It's a game.  It's fiction, based on fiction.  It's not a reliable source for research.  Do you consult the rules for Candy Land while writing an encyclopedia article on chocolate manufacturing?  It makes for a better gaming atmosphere to say that the name means "Worshipper of the Devourer", but it has even less basis in fact than the character himself.  I'd like to point out that the morphemes azrad and hazred/hazrad are the same and have the same meaning.  To jump from "Servant of the Great Lord" (and "the Prohibited" is a bit of a stretch; the sense of hazrat is of exerting control, over an area or a set of objects, thus it can mean a warlord or the area acquired/controlled by him, it has nothing to do with "forbidden knowledge" as the editor was implying) to "Worshipper of the Devourer" takes a deliberate effort to spin the meaning.  The authors of CoC were deliberately equating "great lord" with "Great Old One" or something similar, whereas no such interpretation is linguistically valid. 71.200.138.188 (talk) 00:30, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

What if it's suggested to be a linguistic corruption of "Abdul Al Majnun Haju Min Zarid" ("The Mad Pilgrim From Zard")?69.115.92.234 (talk) 03:23, 5 December 2022 (UTC)User Cary

WRONG!!!!
Those aren't REAL NECRONOMICONS ya douche. Those are just objects of "white collar writers" capitalizing on the infamy of the actual (yet FICTIONAL!!!) tome. And if any of you backwards retards, who keep on insisting that there is a real necronomicon, want to challenge me then I suggest you check this link out, link title (UTC) Anonymous 00:01, MAR., 19, 07

 * SUre there was, just like jedi's are real ;) Sneaking Viper (talk) 20:02, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

If you google "Necronomicon" there are various people who in all seriousness believe it to be true and tell you that it was written by Abdul Alhazred in the 8th century and even some dipstick that will cast spells from it. --Streona (talk) 10:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

With Strange aeons even death may die... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.67.233.95 (talk) 22:30, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Removed from article
I can find no reliable source to substantiate the following: The term "Mad Arab" in reference to Alhazred is always capitalised and used in the manner of an official title such as another person would be called "Prince" or "Sir" and the term can actually be used in lieu of Alhazred's name as a synonym. The references I've seen (such as Daniel Harms' The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana and Anthony Pearsall's The Lovecraft Lexicon) mention the "mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred (note that "mad" is lowercase), but say nothing about this moniker being an "official title". In fact, the story that introduces Abdul, "The Nameless City", also uses the lowercase form: "mad Arab". Abdul is also variously referred to as the "mad poet". I suspect that whoever added this piece of information simply made the assumption that "Mad Arab" was some sort of official designation. However, since no sources are cited, it reads like original research. -,-~ R 'lyeh R isin g  ~-,- 22:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The best source for capitalization/non-capitalization would be Lovecraft's mss., both the fiction and the many, many volumes of letters collected in the five Arkham House volumes, two Night Shade volumes, one volume of HPL's letters to Robert Barlow, slim volumes from Necronomicon Press, and the two (three? more?) volumes from Hippocampus Press. There's a possibility that the Arkham volumes do not always preserve HPL's original capitalization choices, as Derleth has edited them a bit, and any volumes connected with S.T. Joshi may also need checking against the originals, as Joshi, in the Hippocampus Press version of "The Shadow Out of Time," often changes HPL's ms. (as preserved by Barlow) because he thinks HPL would have chosen to employ various archaisms that he had stopped using by that time, late in his career. That said, Joshi is obviously not the most faithful of HPL's editors, as he ignores the variants in HPL's texts for a uniformity that does not exist. Whether other writers changed things or not, or added dimensions to the fictional oeuvre of tomes, does not really matter; HPL was happy to incorporate the writings & developments of his friends/protégés into his Mythos, as he in many places in the letters implies that it is an intertextual, multi-author project. As for "Cthulhu Mythos" being an authorial dictum, if this is true it only became so much later, as HPL refers to the various stories within it as "Yog-Sothothery" in most of his earlier letters. To complicate this even further, the connections between stories are such that very few of HPL's tales exist outside the HPL universe of discourse, and the ones that do are either very short, or very self-enclosed ("The Music of Erich Zann" the most notable stand-alone piece, if I'm remembering right; I no longer have the chart I once made of the interlinkage between the tales). Rtelkin (talk) 14:57, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Odd Phrase - Shall we remove it?
Under the section, "HP Lovecraft," is the following phrase: "In 730, while still living in Damascus, Alhazred supposedly wrote a book of ultimate evil in Arabic, al-Azif, which would later become known as the Necronomicon."

I'm fairly sure Lovecraft never referred to the Necronomicon as "a book of ultimate evil." This should be cited or removed. 0x539 (talk) 00:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

NOT a fictional character!
John Dee translated Necronomicon into English in 1571... and he says "it was written by Alhazred". Böri (talk) 16:05, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Unlikely, as the Necronomicon is a fictional book first mentioned in the works of H.P. Lovecraft in the 1920s. --McGeddon (talk) 13:08, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * NOT a fictional book! http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JKQUd-lTVkg/TA6dj4VgwPI/AAAAAAAACNI/5i7yAUHZabA/s1600/necronomicon02.jpg Böri (talk) 07:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that's the frontispiece to the 1978 George Hay hoax edition (described here). --McGeddon (talk) 11:17, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Abdul Alhazred


text:
Talk:AmbientCalculiOnline

A discussion page about the AmbientCalculiOnline page.

Wondering what does anyone-can-contribute mean? How about a look at Wikipedia FAQ and learn how does one edit a page. --Xudong Guan (Move to Talk page by Larry Sanger)

I'm puzzled, too. Someone (perhaps the person who put up AmbientCalculiOnline) has already put up AmbientCalculusOnline. Neither of those names is likely to be the name of an encyclopedia article (though ambient calculus will, I'm guessing--guessing, because I haven't got a clue what ambient calculus is!). So there's no problem about your putting up links to papers online from this Wikipedia page. And in fact, I personally am delighted if all these people should show up and contribute to Wikipedia!

Anyway, hello, whoever you are--you who have put up AmbientCalculiOnline--I just wanted to welcome you to Wikipedia. I hope you'll stick around and write some mathematics articles for our collaborative encyclopedia. --Larry Sanger

Sorry for the page name. I am not familiar with the free link feature. I have been using TWiki a lot.

I am putting up this page for I am lazy -- I don't want to maintain a resourse page all by myself. So I choose wikipedia and hope other researchers in this field can come here and contribute (at least put the link of their own work here), after I announce the URL. Do you think this is a good idea? Could you find me a better page name? Thank you. --Xudong Guan

Today, I have posted my idea and page URL on the MOCA list. Welcome to this wonderful place, computer science researchers! --Xudong Guan 2001-06-09

title: Talk:AmbientCalculiOnline


text:
User:Larry Sanger/Larry's Text/Anarchism and natural law theory

 * Has been responded to, in parts, by Liam"

But now I want you to consider carefully what, exactly, is being claimed here. The claim is that the reason the state exists is in order to protect our rights. But if the essence of the state is the initiation of force, that means that it is the initiation of force that protects our rights. And that of course makes sense: in order to prevent criminals and foreign invaders from harming us, police officers and soldiers are authorized to initiate force against criminals and foreign enemies.

Remember, though, that the state has a monopoly on the initiation of force; we can protect ourselves from criminals in self-defense, but we cannot go out and punish them ourselves.

 * "punish" no, but at least here in the USA there is such a thing as "citizens arrest". A citizen may initiate force against a criminal for the purpose of capturing a criminal to hold for the authorities or preventing further harm. For example, if a citizen sees a child being abducted the citizen may initiate force against the criminal to rescue the child and even capture the criminal. Citizens rarely make use of these powers, but they are legitimate and lawful nonetheless. Also, here in the USA, it's been enshrined in the defining document of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, that the citizens have an inherant right, even duty, to initiate force against the government (OR more often a given agent of the government) when an abuse of authority is underway which is not being corrected by other means. Which is where the Second Amendment to the US Constitution comes in and why the government of the USA does not and should never have the monopoly of available force. Nor should any other nation/state have the monopoly of available force. Libdemplus 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)**

That is left up to governments. Here's another example. We can give money to charity voluntarily; but we cannot go out and force other people to give money to poor people. Only the state is permitted to do that, not individual citizens.

What this means, then, is we have to give up some of the freedom that we would otherwise have, in order to have a government. At the very least, what we cannot do is initiate force against other people, no matter how annoying or immoral we may think they are. That is a liberty, a freedom, that we don't have. And why don't we have it? Because we have given that liberty up to government. If that liberty, the liberty to initiate force, were retained by many ordinary people, that would undermine the government. The state exists, and works, only if it has that monopoly on the initiation of force; if it does not, then there are, in fact, any number of as it were competing governments running around within the same geographical area. In other words, we'd have anarchy in that case.

 * When people say 'we'd have anarchy', what they actually mean is chaos, which is what most people mean when they mistakenly use the word anarchy. In reality they have little to do with each other. The images of societal collapse and chaos have been equated with anarchy in most peoples minds. This association is continually reinforced by the popular press. Anarchists think this has been done to invalidate their concept, and preserve the benefits the patrons of government now have; they think these patrons are the true 'we the people' that government and law serves. - "seekyn"

 * Anarchy most commonly has been practiced as a peoples desire to live in peace, without the interference of self appointed (global) governments. Many anarchists are deeply nonviolent. Most armed 'competing governments' these days are armed by plants in familiar constituencies, and are fighting over resources sold to us by familiar brands. wrote Liam."

Larry again: I hope this makes it clearer to say that, in order to get protection of your rights from the state, you must give up your liberty to some extent. And indeed, the more that you want government to do, the more liberty, to do what you like, you have to give up.

Now there are some people who think, first, that government always winds up violating the very rights it is supposed to be protecting; and, second, liberty to do what you want to do is for various reasons extremely important. These two claims are different from each other, but the people who hold one view very often hold the other. As regards the first, they think no government does a good job of protecting rights; they say power corrupts, and so governments are always corrupted eventually, no matter how noble their beginnings are. As regards the second, which is perhaps more important for these people, liberty to do what you want to do is definitely one of the goods in life. Some people have written as though they thought liberty was intrinsically good -- desirable for its own sake. But I think you'll agree with me when I say it seems very odd to say that liberty is something that is desirable for its own sake. Aren't there reasons for which we want liberty? For example, many people think that in order to pursue our own happiness, we must have a great deal of liberty; meaning that we must not be restrained by other people or by government from doing what we choose. If that's right, then liberty would be an instrumentally good thing -- not intrinsically good.

Anyway, however that is, having views like this, there are some people who think there is no moral justification for government. Of course, they say a lot more than the two things I listed, in defending this view; but we don't have time to go into their arguments in any depth. But let's at least name and define the position:

 * Please do.**

Anarchism is the view that there is no moral justification for the state, i.e., there is no moral justification for government agents initiating force, and any monopoly that a government may have on the power to initiate force is morally illegitimate.

Now, if we're going to answer our question, "What is the justification of the state?" then we had better have some reason to reject anarchism, because anarchism says there is no justification for the state.

But notice what anarchism doesn't say. The way I've defined it, anarchism does not say that a society with no government would certainly be better than a society with some particular kind of government, such as a constitutional, mixed-economy republic like the United States. It just says that there is no moral justification for any state; that's all it says. But you have to admit -- it sounds kind of strange to say that the government could greatly improve the lives of its constituents, and yet have no moral justification. I mean, if it does improve the lives of the people under its authority, isn't that at least the beginnings of a justification? The fact that the government does help everyone out, in various ways -- isn't that what gives government a right to exist? We'll see about that later.

 * It's not as if we choose between the government and nothing. People always have helped each other out, more I believe as eons passed - thats why we are so successful as a race. Any debate about HOW we cooperate is, like Mr Bushes American way of life, 'not up for negotiation'."

Notice another thing that anarchism doesn't say. As I've defined it, it doesn't say that we ought to go out and overthrow governments. It might be entirely morally wrong to revolt, even though there's no moral justification for the state. As experience has shown repeatedly, it almost always ends up doing far more harm than good, to try to overthrow the government violently. Sometimes, as in the case of the American Revolution, it does some good; but of course, you'll notice that in that case a government was established in the place of the rejected English colonial government. It's not like those American revolutionaries were fighting to establish a situation in which there was no government at all! Indeed, all revolts of any major size have been revolts aiming to change the government -- not to do away with all government entirely. That would just be silly and destructive, I think. I doubt I'm going very far out on a limb in saying that, either!

In saying that a state should do these things, we say that the state should have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in an area. That means that our liberty to do various things is infringed; the state must exercise authority over us, in order to protect our rights. But liberty is a good thing, something desirable for various reasons. So we should desire to give it up to a state only for excellent reasons. Indeed, this raises the question: What, if anything, justifies any particular government's removal of (some of) our liberties? Because, remember, the people in the government are human beings like the rest of us; and thus they too are also apt to harm our rights, just as might happen if there were no state at all. So it becomes pressing to explain when a state is legitimate, or what makes a particular state legitimate.

Now what anarchism (or, as it is also called,theoretical anarchism) does say, is that there is no way to give a moral justification for the state. Government agents are never morally justified when they create a monopoly on the initiation of force within a given area. That's what anarchism says.

 * Funny, I've never read that."

So it's pretty clear how we can refute anarchism, right? What we have to do is to come up with a moral justification for the state. If you look at it like that, you can regard anarchism as a challenge: because it is what you are stuck with if you fail to adequately explain why the existence of government is morally justified. So let's get to work trying to explain that.

I'm going to discuss one first attempt to justify the state only very briefly. We've already mentioned it: it's called the natural law theory. Now (as our text says), just by itself, the natural law theory does not offer any justification of the state. Because all it says is that there is some set of natural laws, which specify rules of conduct that prescribe our natural duties and natural rights. We can say all we like that there is some body of law that is natural or appropriate for humankind. But it requires separate argument, another argument, to show that natural law requires that we establish a government; or to show that natural law can be enforced only if there is a government. I mean, after all, what if something rather unusual should happen -- what if it turned out that the natural law forbade us from establishing any government? What if government agents were never morally justified, by natural law, in initiating force against people? If you think that's just a ridiculous notion, then I just wonder how you're going to argue for it. One thing here at least is clear, and that is that some separate argument is required. The mere assertion that there is a body of natural law doesn't even come close to giving a moral justification of the state.

Now there has been a version of the natural law theory, which did include a justification for the state. It's something you've probably heard about -- the so-called "divine right of kings." According to the doctrine of the divine right of kings, monarchs were justified in holding their power by a sort license from God. Their rule was regarded as a reflection of natural law, which was, in the end, God's law, God's intentions for the political organization of human beings.

If you ever talk about "God-given rights," you are, probably unwittingly, continuing this ancient tradition of regarding natural law as God's law about how we should be organized politically. If you think it's God that gives you the rights to life, liberty, and property, then to that extent at least, you are buying into this notion that God writes the rules in heaven, and our duty is to follow them.

But remember, if you can, what we said about theological ethics back when we were discussing the philosophy of religion. The same point we made then applies again now. We should ask: Why does God want us to establish governments that protect our God-given rights to life, liberty, and property? I might, I suppose, sound impressive to some of you to say that God does want us to establish governments. I won't quarrel with that; if God exists, he probably does want us to establish governments! And if God exists, then his wishes probably are as good as law! The question in any case is why God would want us to establish governments. Surely there's something about human nature, and about the situation we find ourselves in, that would explain why God commands us to establish governments. If there is any reason at all, it is that reason that we can use to justify the existence of the state. And in a way then -- not to be impious -- we can as it were bypass God. We can bypass God in giving our explanation of why the state ought to exist. Because we can say, simply: "Our reason for thinking that the state should exist is just the same as God's reason, which is X." Then we just have to fill in the X!

But of course, that's the whole problem to begin with. We aren't any further along in discovering the justification of the state than when we started. So let's consider some positive theories about why the state is justified.


text:
August Derleth

August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. He was the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. He made contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the cosmic horror genre and helped found the publisher Arkham House (which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK). Derleth was also a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography. Notably, he created the fictional detective Solar Pons, a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing.

Life
The son of William Julius Derleth and Rose Louise Volk, Derleth grew up in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He was educated in local parochial and public high school. Derleth wrote his first fiction at age 13. He was interested most in reading, and he made three trips to the library a week. He would save his money to buy books (his personal library exceeded 12,000 volumes later on in life). Some of his biggest influences were Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays, Walt Whitman, H. L. Mencken's The American Mercury, Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Scott, and Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

Forty rejected stories and three years later, according to anthologist Jim Stephens, he sold his first story, "Bat's Belfry", to Weird Tales magazine in 1926. Derleth wrote throughout his four years at the University of Wisconsin, where he received a B.A. in 1930. During this time he also served briefly as associate editor of Minneapolis-based Fawcett Publications Mystic Magazine.

Returning to Sauk City in the summer of 1931, Derleth worked in a local canning factory and collaborated with childhood friend Mark Schorer (later Chairman of the University of California, Berkeley English Department). They rented a cabin, writing Gothic and other horror stories and selling them to Weird Tales magazine. Derleth won a place on the O'Brien Roll of Honor for Five Alone, published in Place of Hawks, but was first published in Pagany magazine.

As a result of his early work on the Sac Prairie Saga, Derleth was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship; his sponsors were Helen C. White, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis and poet Edgar Lee Masters of Spoon River Anthology fame.

In the mid-1930s, Derleth organized a Ranger's Club for young people, served as clerk and president of the local school board, served as a parole officer, organized a local men's club and a parent-teacher association. He also lectured in American regional literature at the University of Wisconsin and was a contributing editor of Outdoors Magazine.

With longtime friend Donald Wandrei, Derleth founded Arkham House in 1939. Its initial objective was to publish the works of H. P. Lovecraft, with whom Derleth had corresponded since his teenage years. At the same time, he began teaching a course in American Regional Literature at the University of Wisconsin.

In 1941, he became literary editor of The Capital Times newspaper in Madison, a post he held until his resignation in 1960. His hobbies included fencing, swimming, chess, philately and comic-strips (Derleth reportedly used the funding from his Guggenheim Fellowship to bind his comic book collection, most recently valued in the millions of dollars, rather than to travel abroad as the award intended.). Derleth's true avocation, however, was hiking the terrain of his native Wisconsin lands, and observing and recording nature with an expert eye.

Derleth once wrote of his writing methods, "I write very swiftly, from 750,000 to a million words yearly, very little of it pulp material."

In 1948, he was elected president of the Associated Fantasy Publishers at the 6th World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto.

He was married April 6, 1953, to Sandra Evelyn Winters. They divorced six years later. Derleth retained custody of the couple's two children, April Rose Derleth and Walden William Derleth. April earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. She became majority stockholder, President, and CEO of Arkham House in 1994. She remained in that capacity until her death. She was known in the community as a naturalist and humanitarian. April died on March 21, 2011.

In 1960, Derleth began editing and publishing a magazine called Hawk and Whippoorwill, dedicated to poems of man and nature.

Derleth died of a heart attack on July 4, 1971, and is buried in St. Aloysius Cemetery in Sauk City. The U.S. 12 bridge over the Wisconsin River is named in his honor. Derleth was Roman Catholic.

In Derleth's biography, Dorothy M. Grobe Litersky stated that Derleth was bisexual, and maintained long-term romantic relationships with both men and women. This assertion has not been verified; no names were given of these romantic partners (in the interest of privacy according to Litersky), and no evidence or acknowledgement of Derleth having a bisexual or homosexual orientation has ever been found in his personal correspondence. However, his 1953 novella, The House of Moonlight, depicts a musician's personal crisis following a close relationship with a male cohabitant, which undermines his professional confidence and subsequent relationships with women, and ultimately results in a probable suicide, a very common outcome of sexual identity questioning in novels of the time.

Career
Derleth wrote more than 150 short stories and more than 100 books during his lifetime.

The Sac Prairie Saga
Derleth wrote an expansive series of novels, short stories, journals, poems, and other works about Sac Prairie. Derleth intended this series to comprise up to 50 novels telling the projected life-story of the region from the 19th century onwards, with analogies to Balzac's Human Comedy and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

This, and other early work by Derleth, made him a well-known figure among the regional literary figures of his time: early Pulitzer Prize winners Hamlin Garland and Zona Gale, as well as Sinclair Lewis, the last both an admirer and critic of Derleth.

As Edward Wagenknecht wrote in Cavalcade of the American Novel, "What Mr. Derleth has that is lacking...in modern novelists generally, is a country. He belongs. He writes of a land and a people that are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. In his fictional world, there is a unity much deeper and more fundamental than anything that can be conferred by an ideology. It is clear, too, that he did not get the best, and most fictionally useful, part of his background material from research in the library; like Scott, in his Border novels, he gives, rather, the impression of having drunk it in with his mother's milk."

Jim Stephens, editor of An August Derleth Reader, (1992), argues: "what Derleth accomplished....was to gather a Wisconsin mythos which gave respect to the ancient fundament of our contemporary life."

The author inaugurated the Sac Prairie Saga with four novellas comprising Place of Hawks, published by Loring & Mussey in 1935. At publication, The Detroit News wrote: "Certainly with this book Mr. Derleth may be added to the American writers of distinction."

Derleth's first novel, Still is the Summer Night, was published two years later by the famous Charles Scribners' editor Maxwell Perkins, and was the second in his Sac Prairie Saga.

Village Year, the first in a series of journals – meditations on nature, Midwestern village American life, and more – was published in 1941 to praise from The New York Times Book Review: "A book of instant sensitive responsiveness...recreates its scene with acuteness and beauty, and makes an unusual contribution to the Americana of the present day." The New York Herald Tribune observed that "Derleth...deepens the value of his village setting by presenting in full the enduring natural background; with the people projected against this, the writing comes to have the quality of an old Flemish picture, humanity lively and amusing and loveable in the foreground and nature magnificent beyond." James Grey, writing in the St. Louis Dispatch concluded, "Derleth has achieved a kind of prose equivalent of the Spoon River Anthology."

In the same year, Evening in Spring was published by Charles Scribners & Sons. This work Derleth considered among his finest. What The Milwaukee Journal called "this beautiful little love story", is an autobiographical novel of first love beset by small-town religious bigotry. The work received critical praise: The New Yorker considered it a story told "with tenderness and charm", while the Chicago Tribune concluded: "It's as though he turned back the pages of an old diary and told, with rekindled emotion, of the pangs of pain and the sharp, clear sweetness of a boy's first love." Helen Constance White, wrote in The Capital Times that it was "...the best articulated, the most fully disciplined of his stories."

These were followed in 1943 with Shadow of Night, a Scribners' novel of which The Chicago Sun wrote: "Structurally it has the perfection of a carved jewel...A psychological novel of the first order, and an adventure tale that is unique and inspiriting."

In November 1945, however, Derleth's work was attacked by his one-time admirer and mentor, Sinclair Lewis. Writing in Esquire, Lewis observed, "It is a proof of Mr. Derleth's merit that he makes one want to make the journey and see his particular Avalon: The Wisconsin River shining among its islands, and the castles of Baron Pierneau and Hercules Dousman. He is a champion and a justification of regionalism.  Yet he is also a burly, bounding, bustling, self-confident, opinionated, and highly-sweatered young man with faults so grievous that a melancholy perusal of them may be of more value to apprentices than a study of his serious virtues.  If he could ever be persuaded that he isn't half as good as he thinks he is, if he would learn the art of sitting still and using a blue pencil, he might become twice as good as he thinks he is – which would about rank him with Homer." Derleth good-humoredly reprinted the criticism along with a photograph of himself sans sweater, on the back cover of his 1948 country journal: Village Daybook.

A lighter side to the Sac Prairie Saga is a series of quasi-autobiographical short stories known as the "Gus Elker Stories", amusing tales of country life that Peter Ruber, Derleth's last editor, said were "...models of construction and...fused with some of the most memorable characters in American literature." Most were written between 1934 and the late 1940s, though the last, "Tail of the Dog", was published in 1959 and won the Scholastic Magazine short story award for the year. The series was collected and republished in Country Matters in 1996.

Walden West, published in 1961, is considered by many Derleth's finest work. This prose meditation is built out of the same fundamental material as the series of Sac Prairie journals, but is organized around three themes: "the persistence of memory...the sounds and odors of the country...and Thoreau's observation that the 'mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. A blend of nature writing, philosophic musings, and careful observation of the people and place of "Sac Prairie". Of this work, George Vukelich, author of "North Country Notebook", writes: "Derleth's Walden West is...the equal of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg,Ohio, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology."  This was followed eight years later by Return to Walden West, a work of similar quality, but with a more noticeable environmentalist edge to the writing, notes critic Norbert Blei.

A close literary relative of the Sac Prairie Saga was Derleth's Wisconsin Saga, which comprises several historical novels.

Detective fiction and "Solar Pons"
Detective fiction represented another substantial body of Derleth's work. Most notable among this work was a series of 70 stories in affectionate pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, whose creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he admired greatly. The stories feature a Holmes-styled British detective named Solar Pons, of 7B Praed Street in London. These included one published novel as well (Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey). The series was greatly admired by such notable writers and critics of mystery and detective fiction as Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay), Anthony Boucher, Vincent Starrett, and Howard Haycraft.

In his 1944 volume The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen wrote of Derleth's "The Norcross Riddle", an early Pons story: "How many budding authors, not even old enough to vote, could have captured the spirit and atmosphere with as much fidelity?" Queen adds, "his choice of the euphonic Solar Pons is an appealing addition to the fascinating lore of Sherlockian nomenclature." Vincent Starrett, in his foreword to the 1964 edition of The Casebook of Solar Pons, wrote that the series is "as sparkling a galaxy of Sherlockian pastiches as we have had since the canonical entertainments came to an end."

Despite close similarities to Doyle's creation, Pons lived in the post-World War I era, in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Though Derleth never wrote a Pons novel to equal The Hound of the Baskervilles, editor Peter Ruber wrote that "Derleth" produced more than a few Solar Pons stories almost as good as Sir Arthur's, and many that had better plot construction."

Although these stories were a form of diversion for Derleth, Ruber, who edited The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition (2000), argued: "Because the stories were generally of such high quality, they ought to be assessed on their own merits as a unique contribution in the annals of mystery fiction, rather than suffering comparison as one of the endless imitators of Sherlock Holmes."

Some of the stories were self-published, through a new imprint called "Mycroft & Moran", an appellation of humorous significance to Holmesian scholars. For approximately a decade, an active supporting group was the Praed Street Irregulars, patterned after the Baker Street Irregulars.

In 1946, Conan Doyle's two sons made some attempts to force Derleth to cease publishing the Solar Pons series, but the efforts were unsuccessful, and were eventually withdrawn.

Derleth's mystery and detective fiction also included a series of works set in Sac Prairie and featuring Judge Peck as the central character.

Youth and children's fiction
Derleth wrote many and varied children's works, including biographies meant to introduce younger readers to explorer Jacques Marquette, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Arguably most important among his works for younger readers, however, is the Steve and Sim Mystery Series, also known as the Mill Creek Irregulars series. The ten-volume series, published between 1958 and 1970, is set in Sac Prairie of the 1920s and can thus be considered in its own right a part of the Sac Prairie Saga, as well as an extension of Derleth's body of mystery fiction. Robert Hood, writing in the New York Times said: "Steve and Sim, the major characters, are twentieth-century cousins of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer; Derleth's minor characters, little gems of comic drawing." The first novel in the series, The Moon Tenders, does, in fact, involve a rafting adventure down the Wisconsin River, which led regional writer Jesse Stuart to suggest the novel was one that "older people might read to recapture the spirit and dream of youth." The connection to the Sac Prairie Saga was noted by the Chicago Tribune: "Once again a small midwest community in 1920s is depicted with perception, skill, and dry humor."

Arkham House and the "Cthulhu Mythos"
Derleth was a correspondent and friend of H. P. Lovecraft – when Lovecraft wrote about "le Comte d'Erlette" in his fiction, it was in homage to Derleth. Derleth invented the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe depicted in the series of stories shared by Lovecraft and other writers in his circle.

When Lovecraft died in 1937, Derleth and Donald Wandrei assembled a collection of Lovecraft's stories and tried to get them published. Existing publishers showed little interest, so Derleth and Wandrei founded Arkham House in 1939 for that purpose. The name of the company derived from Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, which features in many of his stories. In 1939, Arkham House published The Outsider and Others, a huge collection that contained most of Lovecraft's known short stories. Derleth and Wandrei soon expanded Arkham House and began a regular publishing schedule after its second book, Someone in the Dark, a collection of some of Derleth's own horror stories, was published in 1941.

Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote a number of stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft. These were published in Weird Tales and later in book form, under the byline "H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", with Derleth calling himself a "posthumous collaborator." This practice has raised objections in some quarters that Derleth simply used Lovecraft's name to market what was essentially his own fiction; S. T. Joshi refers to the "posthumous collaborations" as marking the beginning of "perhaps the most disreputable phase of Derleth's activities".

Dirk W. Mosig, S. T. Joshi, and Richard L. Tierney were dissatisfied with Derleth's invention of the term Cthulhu Mythos (Lovecraft himself used Yog-Sothothery) and his presentation of Lovecraft's fiction as having an overall pattern reflecting Derleth's own Christian world view, which they contrast with Lovecraft's depiction of an amoral universe. However, Robert M. Price points out that while Derleth's tales are distinct from Lovecraft's in their use of hope and his depiction of a struggle between good and evil, nevertheless the basis of Derlerth's systemization are found in Lovecraft. He also suggests that the differences can be overstated: Derleth was more optimistic than Lovecraft in his conception of the Mythos, but we are dealing with a difference more of degree than kind. There are indeed tales wherein Derleth's protagonists get off scot-free (like "The Shadow in the Attic", "Witches' Hollow", or "The Shuttered Room"), but often the hero is doomed (e.g., "The House in the Valley", "The Peabody Heritage", "Something in Wood"), as in Lovecraft. And it must be remembered that an occasional Lovecraftian hero does manage to overcome the odds, e.g., in "The Horror in the Museum", "The Shunned House", and 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'. Derleth also treated Lovecraft's Great Old Ones as representatives of elemental forces, creating new fictional entities to flesh out this framework.

Such debates aside, Derleth's founding of Arkham House and his successful effort to rescue Lovecraft from literary oblivion are widely acknowledged by practitioners in the horror field as seminal events in the field. For instance, Ramsey Campbell has acknowledged Derleth's encouragement and guidance during the early part of his own writing career, and Kirby McCauley has cited Derleth and Arkham House as an inspiration for his own anthology Dark Forces. Arkham House and Derleth published Dark Carnival, the first book by Ray Bradbury, as well. Brian Lumley cites the importance of Derleth to his own Lovecraftian work, and contends in a 2009 introduction to Derleth's work that he was "...one of the first, finest, and most discerning editors and publishers of macabre fiction."

Important as was Derleth's work to rescue H.P. Lovecraft from literary obscurity at the time of Lovecraft's death, Derleth also built a body of horror and spectral fiction of his own; still frequently anthologized. The best of this work, recently reprinted in four volumes of short stories – most of which were originally published in Weird Tales, illustrates Derleth's original abilities in the genre. While Derleth considered his work in this genre less important than his most serious literary efforts, the compilers of these four anthologies, including Ramsey Campbell, note that the stories still resonate after more than 50 years.

In 2009, The Library of America selected Derleth's story The Panelled Room for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales.

Other works
Derleth also wrote many historical novels, as part of both the Sac Prairie Saga and the Wisconsin Saga. He also wrote history; arguably most notable among these was The Wisconsin: River of a Thousand Isles, published in 1942. The work was one in a series entitled "The Rivers of America", conceived by writer Constance Lindsay Skinner during the Great Depression as a series that would connect Americans to their heritage through the history of the great rivers of the nation. Skinner wanted the series to be written by artists, not academicians. Derleth, while not a trained historian, was, according to former Wisconsin state historian William F. Thompson, "...a very competent regional historian who based his historical writing upon research in the primary documents and who regularly sought the help of professionals... ." In the foreword to the 1985 reissue of the work by The University of Wisconsin Press, Thompson concluded: "No other writer, of whatever background or training, knew and understood his particular 'corner of the earth' better than August Derleth."

Additionally, Derleth wrote a number of volumes of poetry. Three of his collections – Rind of Earth (1942), Selected Poems (1944), and The Edge of Night (1945) – were published by the Decker Press, which also printed the work of other Midwestern poets such as Edgar Lee Masters.

Derleth was also the author of several biographies of other writers, including Zona Gale, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

He also wrote introductions to several collections of classic early 20th century comics, such as Buster Brown, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Katzenjammer Kids, as well as a book of children's poetry entitled A Boy's Way, and the foreword to Tales from an Indian Lodge by Phebe Jewell Nichols. Derleth also wrote under the pen names Stephen Grendon, Kenyon Holmes and Tally Mason.

Derleth's papers were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison.

Awards

 * O'Brien Roll of Honour for short story, 1933
 * Guggenheim fellow, 1938

title: August Derleth