1828 - Ada and ‘Flyology’

Ada’s first science project

Ada showed a keen interest in science and math from an early age. After Ada took a year-long European tour with her mother at twelve-years-old, she decided she wanted to fly and began a project, which she approached “methodically, thoughtfully, with imagination and passion” (County Line Magazine).

“I have got a scheme,” she wrote to her mother, “to make a thing in the form of a horse with a steam engine in the inside so contrived as to move an immense pair of wings, fixed on the outside of the horse, in such a manner as to carry it up into the air while a person sits on its back” (Klein).

She constructed wings after investigating which materials would make the best wings, researched bird anatomy and looked at the proportions of a bird’s wings in relation to their body, and compiled her research and findings in Flyology, a book she made which included illustrations, and her ideas on “how to mimic bird flight with steam-powered machines” (Wolfram).

It is important to note that professional scientists were very few in the early 19th century, and the term scientist versus “man of science” would not be coined until 1836.