Celebrate Ada Lovelace Day

Who was Ada Lovelace?

The Countess of Lovelace, Augusta Ada Byron, is considered one of the first computer programmers. In her translation, she commented on Charles Babbage's inventions. At the age of 27, she died on November 27, 1852, from complications related to her 1852 birth. Her father was Lord Byron, the great English poet.

Early Years for Lady Byron

Ada was the only child of Lord Byron and Lady Byron. When Ada was born, Byron left England. At the age of eight, Ada lost her father in Greece. Ada's mother deliberately encouraged her interest in logic and math rather than developing her father's mental illness. Her father commemorated their parting with a poem that begins, "Is thy face like thy mother's?" Ada named both of her sons Byron and Gordon in his honor. After she died, she requested that she be buried alongside her father. Although Ada was ill frequently in her childhood, she persisted in her studies with great dedication. At the age of 14, Ada Lovelace wrote a book about flying machines called Flyology. She built mechanical wings to help her fly. Today, it may not sound all that remarkable. Still, it happened almost three-quarters of a century before the Wright Brothers managed to lift Kitty Hawk into the air. According to the biography "A Female Genius", Ada had arithmetic, music, and French disciplines.

Personal life

William King and Ada King were married on August 22, 1835. When King became Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada became Countess of Lovelace. The couple had three children. She contracted cholera in 1837. Medications such as laudanum and opium were prescribed to her, and eventually, her personality changed. Apparently, she suffered from hallucinations.

Additionally, she had lingering issues with asthma and digestive problems. William King assisted his wife in her academic efforts. In addition to Charles Babbage, Ada's friends included Sir David Brewster (the inventor of the kaleidoscope), Charles Wheatstone, Charles Dickens, and Michael Faraday. Music, horses, and calculating machines were among her interests.

In 1825, Lovelace met Charles Babbage, a renowned mathematician, and mentor who would become her friend. At 17, Ada attended a party where Babbage talked about his Difference Machine, a tower of wheels that could be easily turned to perform accurate calculations. A few days later, Lady Byron was invited to his house to watch him demonstrate the device in his drawing-room. Interested in the incomplete prototype, Ada suggested to Babbage its potential and her own mathematical studies. 

Charles Babbage and The First Computer Program

Charles Babbage was invited in 1840 to give a seminar about his Analytical Engine at the University of Turin. Babbage's lecture was transcribed into French by Luigi Menabrea, who later became Prime Minister of Italy. Menabrea wrote about 8000 words. The paper of Menabrea was translated into English by Ada Lovelace on behalf of Babbage's close friend Charles Wheatstone. It was translated from French by Lovelace, and she added her own notes. Her version was twenty thousand words long. In addition to the translation, she added notes to the paper. With Babbage's assistance, Ada Lovelace spent more than a year working on this. More extensive than Menabrea's paper, the notes were published in the September 1843 edition of Taylor's Scientific Memoirs. The notes describe an algorithm for calculating Bernoulli numbers. Lovelace is often regarded as the first computer programmer since she devised the first algorithm that was exclusively designed for computer execution. Since she never completed the program, it was never tested. In the years following Babbage's Analytical Engine, her life was characterized by sickness. 

Legacy

Ada's contributions to computer science were not discovered until the 1950s. B. V. Bowden introduced the world to her notes, and they were republished in 1953. The Department of Defense created a programing language named "Ada" in her honor in 1979.

Ada Lovelace Day - A passion for science  

The second Tuesday of October is Ada Lovelace Day, created in 2009 by technologist Suw Charman-Anderson in honor of one woman, Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.