Ada, our enchantress (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Considering Byron popped up even in our podcast on Lucrezia Borgia, Sarah and I thought it high time for a podcast of his own. He’d become our Where’s Waldo for a while.

Oh, Byron. Handsome, rakish, promiscuous, well-traveled, brilliant. Exactly the sort of man you can’t help falling for, even when you know it’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.

Byron’s beginnings lie with his spendthrift father, Mad Jack, and a Scottish heiress named Catherine Gordon. His father spent their fortune and disappeared. His mother was in the picture, but he blamed her corset-wearing during pregnancy for his club foot. He was also sexually abused and beaten by his nanny. And then he inherited his title, at the age of 10.

By the time he reaches Trinity College, Byron’s got 12,000 pounds in debt and a newly explored attraction to men. He also has a pet bear, since Cambridge forbid dogs.

In 1809, before fame hits, he and his best friend, John Cam Hobhouse, go on their Grand Tour, starting with Portugal, Spain, Greece and Albania. He begins “Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage,” which will make him wildly famous after the first two cantos are published.

What follows this fame? Numerous affairs, with both men and women. A disastrous marriage. An illegitimate child and a legitimate one. More gorgeous poetry. And, of all things, the Greek War of Independence. Learn all about it on the podcast.

On Wednesday, we brought you Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. Ada’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron, is determined that her daughter will turn out nothing like her dastardly father. Her stratagem? Ban little Ada from poetry.

Instead, Ada studies math and music, and she happens to be very talented at the former. She wishes to be “an analyst and a metaphysician.” She marries, but she continues to pursue her mathematical education under the tutelage of Augustus de Morgan.

Her life changes when she meets Charles Babbage and learns of his ideas for a calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. A man named Luigi Manabrea had also heard of his ideas and summarized them in an article – but the article is in French. Enter Ada, who can translate it. And while she’s translating, why shouldn’t she append her own notes? suggests Babbage.

What Babbage was conceiving of was the first computer, but he didn’t grasp the implications. Ada did.

What became of the Analytical Engine? And of Ada Lovelace? Listen to the podcast and find out.

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