International Women's Day
The first computer super geek was a woman.
Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, the daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron and mathematician Anna Isabella Milbanke, was the computer whiz who created the first programme.
Anna Isabella, who rapidly left her husband, immersed her daughter in mathematics and science from the age of 4, hoping that a rigorous course of study would prevent her from following in her idle father’s footsteps. From early on, Ada showed a talent for numbers and languages.
At a party in London, Ada met mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. She was fascinated by his inventions, especially by his analytical engine, the first digital computer. Babbage asks the beautiful aristocrat to translate a paper on this engine written by Italian scientist and future prime minister Luigi Federico Menabrea.
Ada went beyond translating the article, she also added 20 000 words of her comments and ideas discussing the machine’s potential. Her notes ended up being three times longer than the original paper.
In one of her notes, she proposed a ground-breaking algorithm for how the machine could compute a sequence of rational numbers, considered to be the first computer programme.This hi-tech pioneer also speculated that the machine “might act upon other things besides number... the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.’'
Modern malicious commentators tried to minimize her contributions to Babbage’s work, claiming that the mathematician himself had written most of the notes. However, recent linguistic analyses discredited these theories.
Her translation and notes published in 1843 under her initials A.A.L., did not attract much attention. Her ideas were so much ahead of their time that it took over a century for technology to catch up. Ada’s contributions to computer science were finally recognized in 1953 when her notes were republished in B.V. Bowden’s book Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. In 1978, the U.S. Department of Defense named its new programming language ADA, still in use today. Her portrait can also be seen on the hologram authenticity stickers on Microsoft products.
More about Ada Lovelace in
Essinger J.: Ada's Algorithm: How Lord Byron's Daughter Launched the Digital Age Through the Poetry of Numbers, Melville House Publishing, 2014.
