ADA LOVELACE (1815-1852) – The woman who wrote the algoritm for the first ever computer program took inspiration from embroidery and music.
Women, especially noblewomen in the 1800s, did not participate in intellectual pursuits like math and science but Ada excelled in them. Her passion led to her becoming the world’s first computer programmer.
ADA LOVELACE FUN FACTS
Daughter of a brief marriage between the Romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke, Ada had a passion for math and science. Her parents separated just a month after Ada was born and four months later, controversy-ridden Lord Byron left England forever. Lady Byron wished her daughter to be unlike her poetical father, and saw to it that Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies.
In 1828, Ada produced the design for a flying machine. It was mathematics that gave her life wings.
At the age of 17, Ada met mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage, who became her mentor.
In 1835, at the age of 20, Ada married William King, who became the Earl of Lovelace three years later making her the Countess of Lovelace. She had three children. In those days, married women only worked within their homes but Lady Lovelace continued her work with Babbage.
ADA’S ALGORITHM
Lovelace was a brilliant mathematician and understood that numbers could be used to represent more than just quantities: they could represent data, as well, and a machine designed to read numbers could also be made to manipulate any data represented by those numbers.
Charles Babbage started his work on a theoretical paper for an Analytical Engine – the world’s first general purpose computer – which was published in 1843. He asked Lovelace to translate French text from his engineer into English. Lovelace not only translated the notes but added her own comments. Her notes ended up being twice as long as the original text.
Similar to embroidery, repeated patterns were needed for mathematical calculations. She described how to code instructions on to cards with punched holes, like those used for the Jacquard weaving loom that used punch cards to automate weaving patterns in fabric.
Lovelace was also an accomplished singer and pianist. She drew inspiration from musical notation symbols that represented aspects of musical performance such as pitch and duration and described how the Analytical Engine could process symbols, compose music, produce graphics, and even aid in scientific research………and she was proven right over 100 years later.
She signed her comments on the paper as “A.A.L.”
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Unfortunately none of Babbage’s machines were built in his lifetime as they required advanced construction techniques beyond the scope of engineering of the day. He also never received enough funding to complete the Analytical Engine, and Lovelace’s notes were forgotten.
REDISCOVERING THE FIRST COMPUTER PROGRAMMER
In 1953, Ada Lovelace’s notes were rediscovered and published in a book about digital computing that showed how computers work by following patterns. She had thought of the computer language a century before computer’s were invented.
Lovelace died on November 10, 1852 at the age of 37, more than a hundred years before her notes were rediscovered. But because of her advanced way of thinking, she’s often considered the first computer programmer.
The computer language ADA is named after Ada. It was created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, the reference manual being approved in 1980.
This exotic figure in the history of computing is honored with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at 12 St. James’s Square, SW1, London, UK.
Lovelace applied knowledge from disparate fields in sciences, arts and the humanities to create solutions that were well ahead of her time.
