Ada Lovelace

Lord Byron

He left the family shortly after Ada's birth; she never met him.

💡 Did you know? Ada never knew her father Lord Byron: her mother deliberately pushed mathematics to curb Ada's „poetic“ Byron side.

1815 in London

Her mother had her rigorously tutored in mathematics: most unusual for a girl at the time.

💡 Did you know? Ada grew up with an upbringing strictly focused on science: unusual for a girl of her time.

Charles Babbage

They met at a London soirée in 1833; Babbage later called her "the Enchantress of Number".

💡 Did you know? Babbage admiringly called Ada „the enchantress of numbers.“

Analytical Engine

The programmable machine was never built in their lifetimes: it remained plans and partial models.

💡 Did you know? Babbage's „Analytical Engine“ was never finished: yet its design already had memory and a processor like a modern computer.

annotations to a translation

Her own notes grew to nearly three times the length of the translated paper by the Italian Luigi Menabrea.

💡 Did you know? Ada's notes were three times longer than the translated text she was annotating.

Note G (Bernoulli numbers)

In her „Note G“ Lovelace described how the machine could compute Bernoulli numbers: step by step like a program.

💡 Did you know? This is why Ada Lovelace counts as the first programmer in history, for a computer that was never built.

manipulating symbols, e.g. composing music

She thereby described, more than a century in advance, what computers actually do today: thinking further ahead than Babbage himself.

💡 Did you know? Lovelace foresaw that machines might one day even compose music: over a hundred years before the computer.

poetical science

Lovelace called her way of thinking „poetical science“: the union of imagination and rigorous mathematics.

💡 Did you know? A nod to her father: her mother had intended the maths lessons precisely as an antidote to Byron's poetic legacy.

Mary Somerville

Somerville also introduced her to Charles Babbage; later she was tutored by the logician Augustus De Morgan.

💡 Did you know? Mary Somerville, one of the first recognised women scientists, introduced Ada to Charles Babbage.

36 years old

At her own request she was buried next to her father, Lord Byron; the father she had never known.

💡 Did you know? Ada Lovelace died, like her father Byron, at just 36 and was buried beside him at her own request.

Ada

Commissioned by the US Department of Defense, it is still used in aviation and safety-critical systems today.

💡 Did you know? The second Tuesday of October is now Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating women in science.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace (1815 to 1852) was an English mathematician regarded as the first computer programmer in history.

💡 Did you know? In her honour the programming language „Ada“ bears her name, and „Ada Lovelace Day“ celebrates women in science and technology.