"Augusta Ada Byron was only a month old on January 15, 1816, ... Lady Byron and her husband, George Gordon, Lord Byron, had been married just a year. During their months together, he was rarely tender — mocking her, howling that marriage had destroyed him..." (3).

"...January 15, 1816, when her mother, Anne Isabella Byron, snatched her from her cradle and fled London...Lord Byron was drunk the night Lady Byron told him she was leaving him in the morning and would take Ada with her" (3).

"For a while, Lord Byron hoped for a reconciliation and sent letters asking for news of his baby. Once he enclosed a poem including the poignant lines

When our child's first accents flow,

Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father!'

Through his care she must forego?" (9).

"On the recommendation of a professional educator, she hired a tutor, Miss Lamont, who kept a daily log of Ada’s progress in the schoolroom. The lessons began on May 14, 1821" (12).

"Lady Noel died when Ada was six, a terrible loss for the little girl. It must have seemed almost unbearable when afterward Lady Byron told Ada they were leaving Kirkby Hall, the only home Ada had known" (16).

"At age seven, Ada began to suffer terrible headaches, severe enough to interfere with her vision. Her mother, a confirmed hypochondriac, had a squadron of doctors on call and one of them diagnosed Ada with a “fullness of the vessels of the head” or possibly migraines. The doctor concluded that her rigorous lessons were putting too great a strain on her" (17).

"Molding and educating Ada was Lady Byron's main focus until 1825, when, a year after Lord Byron's death, she finally inherited her family's enormous fortune" (25).

"In 1832, Ada was finally well enough to resume horseback riding, dancing, and gymnastics. She recovered her spirits, too. Sophia friend tartly observed that Ada 'had them same love of startling & surprising people by her statements that her father had'" (34).

"In the spring of 1834, Dionysius Lardner, a popularizer of new ideas in science and author of a book on Euclid (which Ada read), gave a set of public lectures on the Difference Engine...Ada attended at least one of them...asked Charles Babbage to show her drawings of the engine..." (49).

"One evening in November of 1834 at Marty's house in lLondon, Ada, Lady Byron, Babbage, and Sommerville's son, Woronzow Greig, were all lamenting the government's refusal to support Babbage's work" (52).