Women in IT- Ada Lovelace

Our woman in IT today is going to be an unusual one. For one thing she has been dead for centuries now.😭 Also she wasn't originally involved in the Information technology directly at first. But the part she played in the computer development, however little as some historians may argue, is quite worthy of remembering. So our woman in IT for today is #drumroll Ada Lovelace.

Who was she?

An aristocratic girl who grew up in the 1800s born to the poet George Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke on the 10th of December 1815. Unlike most aristocratic girls born in that era who were likely trained on how to attend balls and engage in other frivolities common at that period, Ada had an unusual upbringing. 

   Her mother insisted that her tutors taught her maths and science although for a seemingly amusing reason. Her mother insisted because she believed that engaging in rigorous studies would prevent her from developing her father's moody and unpredictable temperament. 

What was she known for?

   With such encouragement, her talent for numbers shown early on was given room to develop. She was introduced to Charles Babbage by one of her tutors and they became friends with Babbage serving as a mentor to her.

   It was during the course of this friendship she got to see a prototype of Babbage's difference machine and was captivated by it. Subsequently, Babbage created plans for a new machine called the Analytical Machine which was meant to perform more complex mathematical calculations and an article was written by an Italian engineer for a Swiss journal. Ada was called to translate that article to English.

   In the translation of that text, she added her own notes which made the document 3 times longer. Her notes contained descriptions of how codes could be could be created to handle letters and symbols along with the numbers. She also theorized a method for the engine to repeat a series of instructions which we know as a process called looping. Her notes are recognized as the first algorithm to be carried out by a machine and as a result she is often considered to be the first computer programmer although some people disagree. 

   Her program though was never tested. However the notes she made are important in early history of computer. Unlike many others including Babbage who focused on the number crunching capabilities of the computer, she was also said to have developed a vision of the capabilities of computers to go beyond calculating which we see is happening today.

   She died on the 27th of November 1852.

   In 1980, the US Department of Defense named a newly developed computer programming language after her i.e.  the "Ada" programming language.