HerStory
Ada Lovelace HerStory
Do you know about Ada Lovelace? She is a pioneer of modern computer science and is credited with writing the very first computer program in history.
Her Story: When Ada was a teenager in the 1830s, her mathematical talents led her to a friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage. Babbage had created the worldâs first calculating machine, called the Difference Engine. Lovelace was inspired by the prototype of the Difference Engine and when Babbage began devising a new project, the âAnalytical Engineââa machine that could perform more functions with greater accuracyâLovelace served as its key interpreter.
Her translation of an article written about the machine, along with thousands of words of her own notes, was published in 1843. In her publication, Lovelace explained how the Analytical Engine would be able to carry out an extensive sequence of mathematical operations. She described methods on how codes could be used to communicate with a machine to produce meaningful characters, such as letters and numbers, and steps to create a looping process, which programmers continue to use today.
Because of her important contributions to computer science, she is dubbed the âMother of Programming.â
Ada Lovelace died of uterine cancer in 1852 at the age of 36 but her legacy lives on as she continues to inspire people all over the world.
Her Story: When Ada was a teenager in the 1830s, her mathematical talents led her to a friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage. Babbage had created the worldâs first calculating machine, called the Difference Engine. Lovelace was inspired by the prototype of the Difference Engine and when Babbage began devising a new project, the âAnalytical Engineââa machine that could perform more functions with greater accuracyâLovelace served as its key interpreter.
Her translation of an article written about the machine, along with thousands of words of her own notes, was published in 1843. In her publication, Lovelace explained how the Analytical Engine would be able to carry out an extensive sequence of mathematical operations. She described methods on how codes could be used to communicate with a machine to produce meaningful characters, such as letters and numbers, and steps to create a looping process, which programmers continue to use today.
Because of her important contributions to computer science, she is dubbed the âMother of Programming.â
Ada Lovelace died of uterine cancer in 1852 at the age of 36 but her legacy lives on as she continues to inspire people all over the world.
- The computer language Ada created by French computer scientists was named after Lovelace in the 1980s.
- The British Computer Society created the Lovelace Medal in 1998 as the top award for computing in the UK. It is awarded annually for outstanding contribution to the understanding and advancement of computing.
- Ada College, a further-education college in Tottenham Hale, London focused on digital skills was named after Lovelace in 2016.
- The second Tuesday of every October marks Ada Lovelace Day, a day founded in 2009 by technologist Suw Charman-Anderson, to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM careers.