ADA BYRON LOVELACE |
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(1815-1852) WHEN MOM IS THE PRINCESS OF PARALLELOGRAMS AND DAD IS THE CENTURY'S RACIEST POET HOW' S A GIRL TO CALCULATE HER FUTURE? ADA AUGUSTA BYRON THOUGHT SHE COULD COUNT ON A COMPUTER. BUT SHE WAS A WOMAN AHEAD OF HER TIME.
Ada Augusta Byron never knew her famous father. Her mother, Ann Milbank, divorced poet Lord Byron in 1816, when Ada was just a month old. The parting was unpleasant, and Milbank did everything she could to make certain young Ada would be nothing like her father. Any interest in poetry was flatly discouraged. Instead, Milbank insisted her daughter pursue mathematics. Milbank’s own early fascination with math led Byron to dub her, “The Princess of Parallelograms”.
Young Ada spent her days among tutors. She became an accomplished mathematician and musician. It was at a dinner party, at the home of one of her tutors, that Ada Augusta Byron met Charles Babbage. The mathematician and inventor had designed the “difference engine”, a mechanical device to process complex mathematical problems. Ada was fascinated. She translated a paper on the invention, adding notes three times the length of the original. Ada saw the possibility for what we now call, “software applications”. She realized this technology could be applied to graphics, computer music, and artificial intelligence.
By this time Ada was married with three children and was known as the Countess Lovelace. Her husband and mother made sure she could continue her work. Ada and Babbage spent years on the difference engine, but it was never completed. The analytical engine conceptualized by Lady Byron and Charles Babbage was far too sophisticated to be built at the time, but it is considered a forerunner of the modern computer. In 1977 the united states defense department named its highest level universal computer program language Ada, after Ada Augusta Byron, Lady Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.aimsedu.org/Math_History/Samples/ADA/Ada.html
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm
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