Counter-Currents
Ada Lovelace
1,093 words
It is a near-universal claim that the world’s first computer programmer was Ada Lovelace. She is referred to as the “enchantress of numbers,” a mathematical genius, a visionary, and a fundamental contributor to the field of computing. The second Tuesday of October is “Ada Lovelace Day” — an event to celebrate women’s achievements in STEM. There is even a programming language named after her.
Ada Lovelace was not the first programmer, nor was she any kind of genius. She contributed almost nothing to the field of computing. Nearly all of the claims about her are wrong, and together they constitute the biggest lies told in the field of tech.
Charles Babbage originated the concept of mechanical programmable computers. He named his most ambitious design the “analytical engine.” Due to funding issues and the manufacturing limitations of the time, he didn’t get to build it, but his plans were sound. In 1833, Ada Lovelace met Babbage at a party. She was 17 and fascinated with Babbage’s work, so they became friends. As the daughter of Lord Byron, who was a sordid character of the time, Ada was born a celebrity. Attention, privilege, talent, and attractiveness came together to form very high self-regard. “The more I study, the more insatiable do I feel my genius for it to be,” she once said.[1]
In 1842, a paper was published in French by Luigi Menabrea based on a lecture Babbage had given in Turin two years prior, where he outlined the analytical engine’s operation and presented diagrams of some of the programs that could be run on it. Ada was approached to translate the paper into English and Babbage suggested that she add some notes of her own. She included Babbage’s sample programs from his Turin lecture and, by haranguing him for help, modified the program’s complexity:
I want to put in something about Bernouilli’s Numbers, in one of my Notes, as an example of how an implicit function may be worked out by the engine, without having been worked out by human head & hands first. Give me the necessary data and formulae.
— Letter from Ada to Babbage
That’s it. Ada Lovelace is called the first computer programmer because she translated a paper written by one man about another man’s work, using example programs written by that man from two years prior that she modified — with a lot of his help. All of the fuss about Ada being the first programmer is about this translated paper. The claims made about her range from establishment media puff-pieces which claim she was “the first programmer” to subtler claims that she was the “first published programmer,” or that she “wrote the first published program.”
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It’s ridiculous to even consider that Charles Babbage, who conceived of the analytical engine long before a teenage Ada was told about it, would not know how to program it or would not have written his own programs for it. Claims that Ada “wrote” the program in the published paper are incorrect. The program was written by Babbage in Turin, two years before. Claims that she is the “first published programmer” or that the program is “hers” are more insidious. If you wrote a formula which you presented in a lecture, and it was then included in a paper that was translated by someone else, would the translator deserve the credit for the formula? I have a hard time thinking that if such a case were made before a modern peer-review board that they would conclude anything other than that the original author of a work is the one who deserves the credit. She was not even the first published programmer, because the program she published was not her work.
People believe what they want to believe, and computing has been a thorn in feminists’ sides for a long time now. Special attention is given to “women in tech” because it’s a cushy position for people of higher-than-normal abilities. It’s for the smart, the creative, the logically-minded, and so it must hurt quite a bit to see one’s own sex so underrepresented there. Since the game of modern feminism is about beating men, there is a great amount of cognitive dissonance in their minds over clearly lagging behind in many important fields. I could state it no better than they do themselves:
Reading through most accounts of history, we could be forgiven for assuming that women were not the warriors, the great thinkers nor the pioneering scientists who shaped and changed our world.
That men alone birthed art, churned out literature and fiercely challenged the status quo, while women functioned only within the domestic realm. But though the canon has perpetually erased the contribution of women and their work has been systematically discredited, devalued and derided, their light has doggedly broken through the cracks.
In short, the massive achievement of the male sex in creating so much of the modern world that serves us all is a con. Women are just as good — nay, even better, perhaps, as they were the first to do it in your male field. My failures aren’t my failures, it’s just the (literal) man keeping me down! It’s the baying call of the loser, and we see far too much of it in our world.
When it comes to controlling the minds of the masses, and therefore the fate of a nation, a myth or a narrative is more powerful than anything else. It supersedes all thought, and when implanted strongly enough, may control that person’s thinking for life. We all sometimes see the futility of disabusing people of their notions, and so we must simply wait out the clock until the mass of people who have a competing narrative outnumbers them.
Increasingly, I look at society as the result of a dominant collective who believes in a certain way “just because.” Slow and persistent subversion replaces those values with each generation, and in turn changes the nature of that society. People believe what they were taught, and very few think about why they believe the things they do. This results in a series of “what about”-isms, knee-jerk responses to points to disengage the mind from considering painful thoughts.
The prevalence of men in physics? What about Marie Curie?
American exceptionalism? What about slavery?
The moral quality of British culture? What about the Opium Wars?
What about the logical male mind, of the clear contribution of male logic to society in the form of technology? What about Ada Lovelace?
That is why they lie.
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Note
[1] Doron Swade, The Cogwheel Brain (London: Little, Brown, 1999).
48 comments
It was Eve who was the first programmer. In one hand she held an Apple, and in the other, a Wang.
Where’s the like button when you need it.
Thanks for this article.
I have programmed in the language Ada for a long time (still do) but never knew this. The name for the language was chosen sometime in the 70’s. I wonder if the naming committee knew…
They not only knew, that’s why they chose the name. I’m somewhat surprised you learned the language without hearing this story. When I learned the language in the early 80’s, the Ada Lovelace story was taught on the first day.
As Ada Lovelace was Byron’s daughter, here’s what Byron had to say about her mother.
‘T is pity learned virgins ever wed
With persons of no sort of education,
Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,
Grow tired of scientific conversation:
I don’t choose to say much upon this head,
I’m a plain man, and in a single station,
But–Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?
Ooh, burn!
But–Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all?
“Learned virgins” and “ladies intellectual” should marry their intellectual peers or better. Given the overrepresentation of men at the right tail which is presumed to exist and probably does exist, there is no reason to settle for anything less.
I thought this article was being a bit unfair given what I thought were her contributions to the field of linear algebra but as it turns out I had been confusing her with another mathematician by the name of Laplace, who was a man withal. Reviewing her biography, it does seem that did little original work of substance. She was a math hobbyist with some imaginative if fanciful ideas, and she saw importance of Babbage’s work.
To the extent that she did possess genius, it is not any wonder given her parentage. The Lady Byron was herself a mathematician in odd contrast to the Lord Byron. Maybe “Lovelace the first programmer” is a bit of a myth, but White aristocratic excellence is not.
“…she was not a mathematical genius, she may have been but it was unknown. She was a novice, she was a promising beginner.”
Charles Babbage and Difference Enginge No. 2 | Doron Swade | Talks at Google https://youtu.be/7K5p_tBcrd0?t=2216
Doron Swade goes over the claims made about Ada Lovelace in a google talk (link goes to exact quote). She contributed no significant discovery to the scientific enterprise and wasn’t a genius. She does deserve some credit for foresight on the role of computers, and for her role in translating the notes. This is not enough to justify the heaping of praise that have been put on her. It seems that her biggest admirer was she herself, referring to her own “genius” in letters. Times come and go but truly, the nature of women does not change:
“Dude, women are just constantly patting themselves on the back about how difficult their lives are and no one corrects them because they want to fuck them.”
Bill Burr, https://youtu.be/AqyRDCdtmW8?t=2
Ancient Greeks have created the first computer, the so called Antikythera mechanism.
It wasn’t a stored program computer though, capable in principle of arbitrary computations, but a fixed-purpose machine for calculating (not very accurately) astrological phenomena.
Good piece about Ada Lovelace: her ‘implementation’ of a perfectly well-known recurrence formula for the Bernoulli numbers — for a non-existent machine! — was of about the same complexity as setting the punched cards for a Jacquard loom’s weaving pattern — something that had been invented one hundred years earlier. Lauding her as the founder of Computer Science is not quite on a par with the risible claim that blacks invented everything from Music to Peanut Butter, but scarcely a triumph of scholarship.
There’s no evidence the Antikythera machine was a Greek product. The differential gearing used in the Machine is nowhere described in Greek literature nor found in any archeological dig. The Machine is an enigma. The only thing Greek about it is the location where it was found.
The location of the discovery in the Aegean, in a wreck containing statues of greek gods and especially the greek text on certain of the fragments strongly suggest a Hellenistic origin. Unless of course one defers the Afrocentric notion of a conspiracy to conceal the machine’s Nubian origin.
In 2016, the history of science journal Almagest published a series of article by a group of scholars, translating the Greek texts inscribed into various parts of the mechanism, texts retrieved through a variety of new technologies. Included in the mechanism were predictions of dates for various Greek games, etc.and although one of the calendrical systems used was Egyptian, the names of the months were described by Greek gods. A Hellenic matrix for this astounding item does not seem either fanciful or counter-indicated.
The question of “who invented the first computer” is a deceptively difficult one that I often use with people to demonstrate how hard it is to know a thing. If a calculating machine is all that qualifies then what about an abacus? The Jacquard machine/loom operated on programmable punch cards that instructed on patterns to weave so that’s even closer.
The credit goes to Babbage for creating a general purpose machine that so closely resembled the computers of today in its design. Babbage’s inability to achieve his dream came from the time he was in – what with a lack of being able to manufacture the many cogs easily to a consistent degree of quality. He had to get them hand-crafted at great cost and his story is somewhat a tragic one.
The one thing women are unambiguously better at than men has been relentlessly devalued by academia and the media.
Nobody likes to feel inferior.
The current push for equal outcomes in valued activities is a predictable result of the above two things.
Look at modern day tech. Elizabeth Holmes just got convicted of fraud. She has a small, but loyal group of feminist supporters. They are bragging about the crime she committed and making excuses for it because of her gender.
I’d like to offer a little balance on this topic.
There is little doubt that this article is 100% true, and clearly most women do not naturally possess the instincts for higher order technical thinking. MOST women, but not all. There are bell curves for both sexes, and I think women tend to have fewer outliers on both ends and more clustered in the middling area of their curve, while men have a flatter bell curve with an extra helping of both idiots and geniuses in the outlier areas.
I think there is something to be said about female intelligence being suppressed in days gone by. I mean, there were indeed times in history where women weren’t even allowed formal education of any kind. No matter how smart you might naturally be, illiteracy is a tremendous hurtle. The counter-argument here is that a majority of men weren’t able to receive any kind of formal education either, Outside of a trade, simply because they were not able to afford it. If an aristocratic woman was educated, it was typically an education heavily centered around music, art, literature, and domestic life. It was a rare woman, noble or otherwise, that pursued an education in art or science (much like it is today). This was for the same reason then as now, because women rarely develop a natural interest in these subjects.
It is an interesting thought though, that if peasants, both male and female, had been given the opportunities for education that we have today, would there have been a few more women of achievement of note? Probably, but just as today, there wouldn’t have been many earth shattering achievers, and with more educated peasant men too, they probably would have been overshadowed anyway.
I did not mean to say that it was a rare woman who pursued an education in ART or science, I meant mathematics or science. That was a haste typo.
If an aristocratic woman was educated, it was typically an education heavily centered around music, art, literature, and domestic life. It was a rare woman, noble or otherwise, that pursued an education in art or science (much like it is today). This was for the same reason then as now, because women rarely develop a natural interest in these subjects.
Surprising as it may seem, Western feminism is partly the cause of this. More chauvinistic cultures are producing more women engineers, probably because they feel they have something to prove. With no feminism, you get no achievement. With a little feminism, you get some achievement, just how much remains to be seen. With a lot of feminism, you get just the right kind of achievement: Women specializing in those fields, even nontraditional ones, where they have a natural advantage, such as family medicine. However one feels about feminism, this much at least can’t be denied. The underrepresentation of women in programming is an elite obsession. The vast majority of women care nothing about it.
This is of course in keeping with data from the highly liberal and feminist first world Scandinavian countries where women are free to pursue any career they want, which actually leads to them settling into MORE traditional roles than in countries where they are oppressed. Give someone full freedom and their natural tendencies will emerge. Show me a feminist today who wants to work as a car mechanic for life.
I would point out that the idea of scientific or mathematical education was altogether unusual prior to 1900, certainly before 1850 for either sex. Most education was based on rhetoric or classical languages. If one wanted scientific knowledge, he had to seek it out for himself. White male scientists weren’t created by an education system; they created science.
This is true, but I think much like how universities today are hubs for academic and scholarly collaboration, at least when they aren’t encumbered with wokism religious ritual and virtue signaling, the university settings of pre-industrial revolution were very fraternal and like-minded scholars would cluster into clubs where scientific pursuits were advanced through philanthropy and royal patronage.
In other words, they didn’t have to be immersed in any specific curriculum, it was just a natural thing that educated men would do. It did still require their access to formal settings though.
I agree somewhat, and I’m not claiming that women can’t be good scientists because I think they can, but if scientific interest and ability were as prevalent in the female as the male, they would have formed their own salons and societies and published under pen names if need be, much as female authors did. Certainly by the 19th century women had enough access to have some representation. There are always notable women in literature, no matter the age, for counter example.
Basically I’m agreeing with what you originally said. I don’t know why I’m still talking…
I actually agree with your view; it’s similar to my own view on things. I don’t agree with the characterisation of “female intelligence being suppressed” as I see historical sex roles as stemming from the practical realities of the times. In an age before the birth control and conveniences of our time, it makes more sense to invest resources into one’s sons rather than daughters. This pattern repeats for most civilisations and can be seen in poor countries today.
Entertaining your thought experiment. If education were equitable a lot sooner then what I think we’d see is more female achievements but the majority as still coming from men. This is essentially our modern times. Generations have been raised in equitable education and an attitude that they shouldn’t be held back (it’s essentially unquestionable dogma at this point) by this point. We see many female scientists but men are still dominant in science & tech.
I’m not sure how this relates to this “balancing” this article, though, which is about a mythical spinning of a historical figure aimed to bolster the egos of females. If I see a lie then I’ll always call it out. It’s sad that after achieving the “dream” of equitable education, feminists could not take the win and instead have to spend their time whining about the emergent differences of the way the different sexes make their choices.
It’s sad that after achieving the “dream” of equitable education, feminists could not take the win and instead have to spend their time whining about the emergent differences of the way the different sexes make their choices.
It is not in the nature of Revolutionary movements to “take the win.” If there is an in exhaustive supply of money to organized social movements, they will continue to find new battles to fight.
Here is something to consider. Upper class European women in the 18th and 19th centuries were expected to be able to play a musical instrument as an aspect of proper “ladyhood”. I think I vaguely recall Jane Austen’s novels occasionally describing musicianship among the female characters in a manner suggesting something taken for granted. There was not the same emphasis on musical faculty among men. Unsurprisingly then, in those centuries more women than men could play instruments. And yet, how many female composers were there? By egalitarian dogma, there should have been as many if not more female greats as male. Were there female composers of note? I know little of music, but I can’t recall any. Female musicianship was inferior to that of males, despite the former group’s instructional advantages, suggesting a biological origin for this discrepancy in achievement.
Female musicianship was inferior to that of males, despite the former group’s instructional advantages, suggesting a biological origin for this discrepancy in achievement.
Except that women were busy for most of their lives having and raising children. Bach had 22 children but still his output was prodigious, thanks to his two wives who worked their lives away in obscurity.
Even now, motherhood takes up a disproportionate share of women’s time and energy. That being the case, to expect equality is to expect women to be superior, especially given current trends toward larger families among highly educated women.
I’m a software engineer. There are women working in the field of course, maybe 10%. Most of them don’t stand out but are perfectly competent and on average, more pleasant to work with than the men, who, conforming to stereotype, sometimes display autistic social skills.
In my experience, I remember only a few women (literally 3) that have been above average. For whatever reason, they were all Russian. One of these women was also very attractive (even rarer among female engineers) and became an obsession of my co-worker, a kind of Slavic unicorn. She’s married, alas.
“When it comes to controlling the minds of the masses, and therefore the fate of a nation, a myth or a narrative is more powerful than anything else. It supersedes all thought, and when implanted strongly enough, may control that person’s thinking for life.”
This has been on my mind a lot lately; listening to NPR on the commute lately, both ways, the degree of “myth making” by them (particularly with regards to COVID and the Jan-6 “insurrection”) has become astounding. Clearly the gain from doing so far outweighs any criticism they might get for not practicing objective journalism. Lol
Good article!
Not to go totally off topic here, but Covid is exploding in LA and San Francisco. This is not a “narrative”. My friends there, including one who’s a very smart doctor, tell me in absolutely no uncertain terms that everyone is noticing huge differences in the outcomes experienced by the vaccinated as against unvaccinated. The former are doing better, period. What is wrong with rightists that, speaking of empiricism, they have such a hard time accepting widespread evidence? In a way, Right Covid-denialists are as obtuse as Left race-denialists. The only admirable position is one which rigorously deduces from the available data. The West invented science, the best mechanism for piercing veils of superstition. We should be the ones most publicly identified with it. On Covid, we’re not. Given the extreme reliance of white nationalism on empirical evidence of racial group differences, this dichotomy is going to return to haunt us someday.
You presume; denial of the virus’ existence is not implied.
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NPR’s coverage is non-stop (shifting focus only momentarily to bemoan the latest mistreatment by whitey of PoC, women, etc., then back to it.)
“Mask. Vax. Boost. Boost. N-95 double-mask. Boost. Boost. Quarantine. Punish…”
They sympathize with healthcare workers’ “sympathy fatigue”, suggesting the unvaccinated deserve scorn, and possibly shouldn’t receive necessary interventions (i e. organ transplants) because they “brought the problems on themselves”.
They talk to pro-vaxxers. They talk about vax-sceptics.
This is not journalism. This is not truth-seeking.
This is creating a narrative. It is myth-making.
It’s that the people we hate are hawking the vaccine so hard. So we reflexively reject whatever the left likes. Doctors can have a herd mentality too, however, and the usual suspects tightly control what they say and think. I’ve also noticed that people on our side who were never all that comfortable with racial thinking seem to find the vaxx controversy a happy alternative. I’m not 1000% that the vaccine is strongly effective. Doctors I know swear to it, similar to you. But I’m fairly certain it’s safe to receive in that you are not going to lose limbs or suffer inordinately from it, like some people are claiming. Hence Pascal’s wager.
I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. Just like Vioxx was.
Not to go totally off topic here, but Covid is exploding in LA and San Francisco. This is not a “narrative”
Pfffff!!!! Yeah, and?? A bunch of people are getting a cold?? I live in San Francisco. Most of the city is “vaxxed” and they all wear masks outside and alone in their cars. Yet, cases of covid are rampant. Seems to me that this glorified flu shot is failing miserably. Almost everyone I know is vaxxed and most of them have tested positive for covid over the last two weeks. I am not vaxxed myself and just the other night I was hanging out with three friends who all had covid within the last week. I haven’t gotten sick. Haven’t been sick the whole of the last two years. Wow, maybe the immune system that I was born with actually works really well? The same one that humans have had for over 200,000 years. These shots are basically just a profilactic against severe disease and/or death at best. In other words, something that protects the person who gets the shot, not something that stops or slows the spread to other people. If you want to be a part of this experiment, go ahead, I think it is still a free country. I have a three-dollar bill I can sell you too….
Oh, and by the way, upwards of 70% of people who have died with covid had at least 4 co-morbidities. Not 1 or 2, but 4. Time for people to extract their heads from their own asses.
Ada made a charming remark about calculus and the “curious transformations many formulae can undergo . . . I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one’s elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar.” You can see why Babbage called her “The Enchantress of Number”.
Yes, there are inflated claims for Ada Lovelace being the first computer programmer, but she did anticipate the use of computers beyond being mere number crunchers: “Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, [The Analytical Engine] might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”
Well, that some modern feminists exaggerate the achievements of women scientists of the past is a fact, but it does not mean that there were no such women or that they are not worthy of respect. From Hypatia of Alexandria to Marie Curie and beyond, they all contributed something to science, and Mrs. Lovelace could well be on this list. The fact that their names are abused now – a hundred, two hundred or 1700 years after their death is not the fault of these women themselves. So the article is informative, but that’s a wrong target for me.
I’m skeptical on Curie. Quite frankly, I’m liable to now question any touted non-white or non-male like I did for Lovelace. I’m not going to categorically state that she achieved nothing, but I worry about a cult-like attitude around such people. Maybe I’ll do a similar look-into here one day.
Well, there are some cults around persons, men alike women, whose achievements are much exaggerate after their death. Sometimes the circumstances of the death made a cult of a person, the cult which would not exist if the same person would die of natural causes in the old age. The leftist and incompetent political loser and traitor of Cuban freedom fighters John F. Kennedy is still celebrated as a great American politician, but in reality his fame is only because of his murder and conspiracy theories around it.
After his success in the Cuban revolution Che Guevara has failed everything who he has tried, but he is still political icon – and the reason for it is not he himself or his deeds, but Felix Rodriguez and Bolivian soldiers who have killed him.
I’m skeptical on Curie.
But do not say it to the Poles. At least she was a scientist, and she was Polish. Not a controversial case regarding ethnicity, as with Copernicus, whom the Poles (and the rest of the Slavs) consider as a Pole, and the Germans (and other Europeans) consider him to be a German.
As a woman who’s worked in tech out of necessity, I can say programming generally leaves me cold. I’d rather mow the lawn. The “high” of focus and concentration is what addicts people to it, but that uses up creative energy that in most people’s cases would be more fruitfully spent elsewhere. Great way to waste decades of your life.
I am a working software developer and I now feel the same way. I used to work on my own programs and learn many things and I now don’t touch development outside of the work context. Maybe that’s sad, but I am working on different things – such as learning survival skills and writing for this site, for example.
It’s possible to overstate Ada’s accomplishments, although she was very helpful in assisting Charles Babbage. The Difference Engine was displayed at a party where people gazed “with the same sort of expression and feeling that some savages are said to have shown on first seeing a looking glass or hearing a gun, Miss Byron…understood its working and saw the great beauty of the invention.” So, Ada wasn’t all just window dressing. Babbage felt incomprehension everywhere, but said: “Ada! Sole daughter of my house and heart!” did comprehend what he offered. Babbage called her the Princess of Parallelograms.
The biggest problem Babbage had was that he was simply too far ahead of his time. You could not build a computer in an age of cast iron, brass, and mahogany. Also, it was felt his asking for government help was against the temper of the times. He should have formed his own company or corporation and go from there. That was what one did in Victorian Britain.
Darkplato was right about the age’s insistence on a classical education. The universities had no interest in technology. It can be argued the industrial revolution really began in the mid-eighteenth century, with no help from universities, and were probably the better for it.
Also, Babbage was grim and frustrated by the incomprehension society showed him, although the Duke of Wellington did encourage Babbage and gave him some funds, as Wellington saw the military value in such a calculating machine. Babbage had to do several things at once, build a machine, create a language for it, create a system for the use and dispersal of such technology…it was too much for one man.
So, Ada did what she could. I nicknamed one of my Apple computers Ada.
There were qualified women mathematicians who were recognized as such. I think of Emile du Chatelet, mistress of Voltaire, regarded as one of France’s best mathematicians in her own day.
As for Lord Shang’s remarks about female composers, there were always some…especially Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, and others before that, but none of exceptional genius, but then, most composers aren’t geniuses. For every Beethoven there were a few Cherubinis. I think the gist of this thread is the over exaggeration of such talent…such as a film that claimed Clara Schumann’s genius was stolen by Robert Schumann, which is preposterous, but fits the ideology of today, such as those three black women bean counters who were considered vital to NASA going into space.
I would take exception with Lord Shang’s arguments on vaccination. It’s being shown the vaccinated are as bad off as the unvaccinated, and the problem is whether Covid is a horrible monstrosity unknown in history, or merely another strain of flu that has to be lived with and whose advent has been used by certain groups to further their goals.
I think more of this is coming out.
I tried to debate this with a woman who, proudly saying she only listened to NPR, shrieked (literally) at me over the phone, saying how as a mathematician, she “believed in the science,” and how “Fauci is a scientist! He has saved MILLIONS of lives!”
No Ada, she.
Didn’t Babbage’s wife finish building his machine. The establishment always like to give her lots of credit for his machine.
If Ada Lovelace’s accomplishments are a lie, then how much is true of anti-Axist Hedy Lamarr and her radio guiding developments for the allies, a name I first heard on Robert Wuhl’s Assume the Position. An article on CC already debunked the african myths of having built the air conditioner, lawnmower, fire extinguisher, the traffic light, blood bank and laser cataract surgery.
Hedy was really sexy at least.
I think his friend Antheil has made her inventions, but she could of course contribute some ideas and solutions. And for Antheil it was good to use her as a “frontwoman” as a beautiful and popular actress. That was a good advertisment/hype.
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