Women in History of STEM - Ada Lovelace - First Computer Programmer
Hi guys, Mimz here! This series celebrates women in history of STEM. Every Thursday I will present a new biographical video centering on an individual. I will state what discoveries or projects they worked on, what they are known for and how they have impacted or inspired women to join the STEM fields today.
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Episode 1 – Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace is known as one of the first computer programmers. With her experience working with Charles Babbage and her countless hours educating herself, she is the first to recognize and understand that a machine is capable of much more than calculating and crunching numbers.
Lady Ada was born on Dec 10, 1815 in London, England. Ada is the daughter of Lord Byron, a poet with a bad reputation and Lady Byron. Her parents separated when Ada was only one month and her father went to Greece. Lady Byron decided to raise Ada on her own, although she was often left with her grandmother. Ada was encouraged to learn mathematics and think logically, instead of following her father’s passion for poetry.
Although Ada was often ill, that did not stop her from learning. When she was 12 years old, she designed wings to fly. She experimented with different materials, like paper, wires, and feathers. She examined the anatomy of birds to understand proper proportions and even integrated steam as the engine.
In Cambridge in 1833, Ada met Charles Babbage, a British mathematician who is known as the Father of Computers. They formed a long-term friendship and began working together. Ada was particularly interested in Baggage’s project, the Analytical Engine. To further her understanding on this project, Ada began translating and analyzing a paper written by Luigi Federico Menabrea, an Italian Military Engineer. This paper was written in French and was Luigi’s take on calculating engines. In 1843 Ada’s notes were complete – 3 times the size of the original paper and contained algorithms that can be carried out by machines.
Ada’s notes were labelled A through G. Note G contained algorithms for the Analytical Engine that calculated Bernoulli numbers. That might not seem like much now, but in the 1800’s this was a great discovery. For this reason, many today consider Ada to be the first programmer.
Ada lived in a time where women were not accepted in STEM fields. Many letters were sent to Ada’s mother expressing their concerns that women should not be studying mathematics. Ada Lovelace died in 1852 from uterine cancer, but her legacy lives on. The United States Department of Defense created a program language called Ada. In 1981, the Association for Women in Computing initiated its Ada Lovelace Award. Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded the Lovelace Medal and in 2008 they initiated an annual competition for women students.
Regardless if you believe Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer or not, it is undeniable that Ada contributed huge to the understanding and development of multipurpose machines. Ada’s notes show that she understood the power and limitations of a computer and her note taking abilities paved a way for others to think on a larger scale.
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