TIMELINE OF EVENTS

9 January 1777	Marriage of Ralph Milbanke and Judith Noel
22 January 1788	Birth of George Gordon Byron
17 May 1792	Birth of Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke
21 February 1805	Birth of William King (later Lord Lovelace)
1809	Byron publishes English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
5 February 1811	Prince of Wales becomes Prince Regent by law
25 March 1812	Annabella Milbanke meets Byron at Melbourne House, Whitehall
1812–18	Publication of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in four cantos
15 April 1814	Birth of Elizabeth Medora Leigh
2 January 1815	Annabella Milbanke marries Lord Byron at Seaham Hall
10 December 1815	Birth of Augusta Ada Byron
15 January 1816	Lady Byron leaves her husband
25 April 1816	Byron leaves England (for permanent exile)
3 July 1822	Babbage announces his designs for calculating engines to Sir Humphry Davy
19 April 1824	Byron dies at Missolonghi
1826–8	Lady Byron takes Ada on a Continental tour
May 1829	Following an (unrelated) attack of measles, Ada enters a three-year period of semi-paralysis
1831	Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction
1833	Ada endangers her reputation with an attempted elopement
5 June 1833	Ada first visits Babbage’s house with her mother and sees a portion of the Difference Engine
1834	Ada begins mathematics lessons with Mary Somerville and attends a lecture about Difference Engine 2 and the need for funding
February 1835	Ada suffers a medical breakdown
April 1835	Lord Melbourne becomes prime minister under King William IV
8 July 1835	Ada marries Lord King at Fordhook, Ealing
12 May 1836	Birth of Byron Noel, later Viscount Ockham
22 September 1837	Birth of Anne Isabella King
30 June 1838	William King is created 1st Earl of Lovelace
2 July 1839	Birth of Ralph Gordon Noel King
June 1840	Ada starts to study mathematics with Augustus De Morgan
11 August 1840	Lord Lovelace is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Surrey
August 1840	Charles Babbage goes to Turin and presents plans for the unbuilt Analytical Engine at a scientific symposium
Autumn 1841	Ada suffers a further medical breakdown
October 1842	Luigi F. Menabrea publishes his account of the Analytical Engine in French (based upon diagrams shown by Babbage in Turin in 1840)
August 1843	Ada’s translation of Menabrea’s paper is published, with additional ‘Notes’ by herself as AAL
January 1844	Ada has another breakdown
November 1844	Ada meets John Crosse at Fyne Court in Somerset.
	In London, she corresponds with Michael Faraday, meets with Charles Wheatstone and discusses the possibility of becoming Prince Albert’s scientific advisor
28 August 1849	Death of Elizabeth Medora Leigh in Aveyron, France
late August 1849	Byron Ockham goes to sea for three years
Autumn 1850	The Lovelaces visit Newstead Abbey and Ada’s interest in betting finds an outlet at Doncaster racecourse
January 1851 – May 1852	Ada leads a private gambling ring and suffers serious losses
June 1851	Following severe haemorrhages, Ada’s doctors diagnose cervical cancer
12 October 1851	Death in London of Augusta Leigh
27 November 1852	Ada dies at 6 Great Cumberland Place
16 May 1860	Lady Byron dies at St George’s Terrace, Primrose Hill
1 September 1862	Death in Wimbledon of Viscount Ockham
February 1869	The first – and cool – response in print in the UK to Teresa Guiccioli’s long book about Byron, in which Lady Byron is denigrated
July 1869	John Paget, in Blackwood’s, supports the Guiccioli account and follows her lead in attacking Lady Byron
Summer 1869	Ralph Wentworth marries Fanny Heriot; Anne King-Noel marries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
September 1869	Publication in the UK and the US of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s magazine article, ‘True Story’, in which she defends Lady Byron against the previous attacks
January 1870	Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s expanded, rethought defence of Lady Byron, as Lady Byron Vindicated
18 October 1871	Death of Charles Babbage
1888	Leslie Stephen publishes a DNB essay on Byron, in which Lady Byron is again denigrated
1889	Ralph Wentworth privately publishes Lady Noel Byron and the Leighs
29 December 1893	Death of William Lovelace; Ralph Wentworth becomes 2nd Earl of Lovelace
1905	Publication of Astarte, Ralph Lovelace’s assessment of the Byron separation and defence of his grandmother against previous attacks upon her reputation
1906	Death of Ralph Lovelace at Ockham Park
1917	Death of Ralph’s sister, Lady Anne Blunt, Viscountess Wentworth, following the death of his daughter, Ada Mary (Molly) in the same year
1920	Publication of Astarte, edited by Mary, Countess of Lovelace, with additional material