Ada Lovelace’s letters contain drawings as well as words. My Dear Ada, at Prague’s MeetFactory from 23 October to 10 January 2027, displays facsimiles of her solutions to geometric problems.[1]
Curators Jana Bernartová and Monika Mitášová looked for images in the archived correspondence. Contemporary works in the exhibition include pieces developed through interactions with Virtual Futurologist A°D°A, experimental educational AI software.[1]
A page that shows the work
A separate public resource gives a sense of that mathematical work: Clay Mathematics Institute’s archive of Lovelace’s exchanges with Augustus De Morgan. Its introduction describes the informal correspondence course she followed in 1840–41 as she moved from basic geometry into calculus.[2]
In a letter dated 13 September 1840, Lovelace wishes she could learn faster. She is juggling algebra, trigonometry, calculus and differentiation practice. She then identifies a precise obstacle: she does not understand what an equation of a curve means. The difficulty sits beside the ambition.[3]
Her 22 December letter begins with a correction: a series she had misunderstood contains successive even powers, rather than every successive power. Discovering the mistake has become valuable to her. Later, writing out an explanation in her Mathematical Scrap-Book exposes another point she cannot yet explain. She sends both her working and her difficulty to De Morgan.[4]
Software in the margins
The current exhibition adds another form of commentary. Its accompanying publication includes textual comments by the experimental software’s AI agents on published texts. The credits also list A°D°A alongside the human curators. Software becomes a contributor to interpretation around the historical documents and contemporary artworks.[1]
The letters preserve that movement from confidence to a specific question. They give a present-day reader a way to follow mathematical thought through the marks and words it left behind.[3][4]
Sources & further reading
- My Dear Ada — exhibition account MeetFactory · Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Ada Lovelace’s Mathematical Papers Clay Mathematics Institute · Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Lovelace to De Morgan, 13 September 1840 — transcription, folios 48–49 and 163–165 Clay Mathematics Institute · Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- Lovelace to De Morgan, 22 December 1840 — transcription, folios 70–73 Clay Mathematics Institute · Accessed 29 Oct 2026