The so-called launch ceremony of Liverpool's new ironclad was, in truth, little more than an overwhelming display of force: a proclamation of steel and steam that shattered—like a hammer upon an eggshell—the increasingly anachronistic pride of the "Age of Sail" and its nostalgic Admiralty loyalists.
That very evening, while the echo of the guns still trembled over the Mersey estuary, the Earl of Minto, First Lord of the Admiralty, presented himself in the private quarters of Prince Consort Arthur Lionheart, clutching—quite unbecomingly for a man of his rank—a draft contract.
The order for twenty more ironclads of the same class was signed without a moment's hesitation.
Within the span of an hour, the shipyards of the Future Industrial Group, directed by Prince Consort Arthur Lionheart, became the most decisive and influential armaments manufactory of the Empire.
And he himself, having won what many had considered a reckless gamble, now held an authority that straddled both political power and industrial supremacy.
As soon as matters in Liverpool were settled, Arthur returned to London without so much as passing by Buckingham Palace.
Another "secret weapon" of the Royal Promotion Association awaited him—something that could shake the very foundations of industrial civilisation.
He entered directly into the Royal Academy of Sciences, into the Electromagnetism and Calculation laboratory led by Faraday and Ada Lovelace—a place not inaccurately called the beating heart of Imperial science.
The moment he crossed the threshold, Arthur halted, almost dazzled.
On one side of the laboratory, Faraday and his assistants were gathered around a giant glass bell. Between the tips of two carbon rods burned a white, brutal, almost otherworldly light: a continuous gleam that seemed to deny the existence of night itself.
"Your Royal Highness, Prince Consort!" Faraday exclaimed, as excited as an apprentice at his first experiment. "Look! The carbon arc lamp! We have succeeded! Set one atop the Tower of London and the entire city would shine, down to the last alley!"
"Excellent work, Sir Michael," Arthur replied with satisfaction.
He knew arc lamps were unsuited for homes—too unstable, too fragile—but for public lighting, for streetlamps, for maritime beacons… this was the key.
Another essential piece of his vision to illuminate London had fallen into place.
Ada Lovelace and the Machine That Thinks
But it was the other half of the laboratory that truly captured his attention.
There, upon a sturdy bench crowded with tiny brass gears, stood a new model of analytical engine: more compact than Babbage's difference engine, yet immeasurably more complex, its mechanical precision rivaling even certain naval chronometers.
Seated before the machine, composed and absorbed in her elegant dark gown, was Ada Lovelace.
She was carefully feeding punched cards—tiny rectangles filled with holes like miniature constellations—into a metal slot.
Since Arthur had explained to her—drawing upon his peculiar ability to blend logic with philosophy—the concept of a system built upon two simple states, 1 and 0, Ada had embraced the idea with an intellectual fervour bordering on ecstatic.
She had remained in the laboratory day and night, weaving numbers and logic into an entirely new language.
A language of commands, written on punched cards:
the dawn of programs.
"Ada, how progresses the work?" Arthur asked, approaching quietly.
Only then did she seem to return to the physical world. Her eyes were reddened by sleepless nights, but a spark within them outshone any exhaustion.
"Your Royal Highness!" she said, unable to hide her exhilaration. She lifted a stack of punched cards. "This is our first true algorithmic program!''
"An… algorithm?" Arthur echoed, though he knew perfectly well what the word meant.
"Precisely!" she replied, almost triumphant. "Mr Babbage's engine can only execute predefined operations. But this machine—thanks to these cards, thanks to the binary system you revealed to me—can make choices. Look at this instruction:
IF the previous result is greater than 10, THEN execute Plan A; OTHERWISE, Plan B."
A shiver ran down Arthur's spine.
In that moment, in the heart of Victorian London, he had heard the voice of the future.
"Ada…" he whispered, astonished. "You are a genius."
She flushed slightly. "Only because you showed me the threshold to cross, my dear Prince."
Ada fed the stack of cards into the analytical engine, then grasped the crank.
The machine came to life.
Clatter… clatter… clatter…
The gears danced in a rhythm both complex and harmonious, almost musical.
After several minutes, the printing roller spat out a long strip of paper.
Arthur took it.
And stood speechless.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…
"The Fibonacci sequence…" he murmured.
"Computed independently, through conditional instructions," Ada confirmed, her voice trembling. "It is the first program in which the machine chooses which operation to follow."
Arthur gazed at the device—a tangle of brass, gears, and screws—as one might behold a newly born creature.
It was not merely a calculator.
It was the first true prototype of a programmable computer.
A seed that would one day take root in military science, engineering, finance, and government—
a seed destined to bloom into electricity, then circuits, then a whole civilisation built upon the numbers 0 and 1.
His eyes returned to Ada, radiant with intellectual fervour.
No wonder that, one day, a programming language would bear her name.