6 Things You Didn't Know About Tech Pioneer Ada Lovelace

World's First Computer Programmer

First things first — Ada Lovelace was a champion for Charles Babbage's calculating machine, the Analytical Engine, when no one else was. She is celebrated for having the foresight that an instrument of this kind had endless practical and scientific uses. Looking at how much technology is integrated into our lives today, we'd say she was absolutely right.

Ada drafted a plan of how the Analytical Engine might calculate Bernoulli numbers, a plan that is now considered the first "computer program."

Source: Google Doodle

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Shaped by a Mathematician Mother

Female pioneering runs in the family, it seems. Annabella Milbanke, Ada's mother, was a skilled mathematician herself who wanted anything but a creative poetic life like the one Ada's father, the colorful poet Lord George Gordon Byron, led.

And so, Annabella infused her daughter with tutoring in advanced mathematics and science from an early age. Ada eventually grew out of her studies and found a mentor in Augustus De Morgan, the first professor of mathematics at the University of London.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Teenage Sensation

At age 17, Ada was introduced to the concept of Charles Babbage's machines at a dinner hosted by another remarkable woman, Mary Somerville. Ada's interest was thoroughly piqued, and it wasn't until 10 years later that Ada acted on her curiosity about the computers-to-be.

Babbage published his findings in 1841 at a seminar in Turin, Italy. Now a wife and mother of three, Ada translated the Italian article and sent Babbage the translated report with her own notes — three times the length of the original article.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Lots to Her Name

In 1979, the US Department of Defense named a software language "Ada" in her honor.

The Ada Initiative is an entire nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women in the tech industry, hosting annual conferences, penning policies preventing harassment of women at fan conventions and tech meetups, and advising other female support organizations.

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Coined the Term "Poetical Science"

No matter how much her mother tried, Ada couldn't escape the poetical inclinations of her father. She wrote to her mother, "If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me poetical science?"

She saw technology through the lens of humanities and culture, once writing that Babbage's machine "weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

Source: Wikimedia Commons

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An Eccentric Personality

Lord Lovelace, Ada's husband, wrote that Ada was ". . . A desperate spirit truly; & with a degree of deep & fathomless prudence, which is strangely at variance with the daring & the enterprise of the character, a union that would give me unlimited sway & success, in all probability."

She was at the same time wildly brilliant and complicated, having been known for her eccentricity and fondness for alcohol. We may never truly understand her, but we can certainly appreciate the legacy that she left for women and technology.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

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