Fascinating Folks: Ada Lovelace

I should probably preface this post with the fact that (as far as i know) Ada Lovelace is of no relation to 20th Century porn star Linda Lovelace. 

This Ms. Lovelace, who lived from 1815 to 1852, was actually born Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, and was the daughter of the English Romantic Poet Lord Byron & Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth.

Her claim to fame however is not being the only legitimate born child of Byron (the guy had a lot of illegitamate ones as well). Ada's important contribution to history (or Herstory if you will) came because she was a brilliant mathematician & computer scientist. That's right, i said computers - waaay back in the 1830's! What!?

You see, Ada worked with Charles Babbage on his proposed analytical engine and her work is considered the origin of what would become computer programming & that thing called an algorithm - long before there were even computers to program or algoriyhms to algo.... whatever one does with an algorithm. She started it all - and did it before she was even 30 years old! Huzzah!

Anyhoo, today there are computer languages named after her (the US Department of Defense's main programming language is called Ada!). There are also tons of awards and scholorships for women in STEM.

In 1981, the Association for Women in Computing inaugurated its Ada Lovelace Award. Beginning in 1998, the British Computer Society (BCS) has awarded the Lovelace Medal. There is even an Ada Lovelace Day, celebrated on the second Tuesday of October! And she even has a coveted Blue Plaque (used to commemorate important figures in British history) at her home in London!

It's also of a fun note that she had a reputation for being a rather loose woman in her day - which was mostly covered up due to her wealth and status. But she didn't care as she (like her estranged father) was a rebel who didn't go for those boring patriarchal social norms of the day! 

She also had a bit of a gambling issue for which she created her very first complex mathematical equation to win at gambling. It did not work. It did npt work at all. I mean it was a disaster and she lost a lot of money.  But she got better.(she was still a teenager then) and her future work in numbers would eventually lead to the computer age and her important place in history!

Oh, and she was also BFF's with Charles Dickens, but that's neither here nor there! 💻