Background and Education
Ada Lovelace is widely considered to be the first computer programmer, and many could say that her programming journey began under the direction of her mother, Annabella Milbanke. According to findingada.com, Lovelace's mother “raised her under a strict regimen of science, logic, and mathematics” with the hope that Lovelace would not develop a volatile temperament like her father. Lovelace was also mentored by a scientist named Mary Sommerville, who introduced her to a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage.
Lovelace and Babbage became great friends, and Babbage spoke very highly of her. As findingada.com reveals, “Babbage described her as ‘that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force which few masculine intellects could have exerted over it,’ or an another occasion, as ‘The Enchantress of Numbers.’”
Contributions
Babbage invented the difference engine, then sought to develop an even more powerful device, the Analytical Engine, that could handle more complex mathematical calculations. Lovelace was intrigued by these ideas, and as biography.com states, “Lovelace was later asked to translate an article on Babbage's analytical engine that had been written by Italian engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea for a Swiss journal. She not only translated the original French text into English but also added her own thoughts and ideas on the machine. Her notes ended up being three times longer than the original article. Her work was published in 1843, in an English science journal.”
Lovelace's thoughts on the Analytical Engine are described as both visionary and forward-thinking. She recognized that the device had the potential to not only interpret numbers, but also letters and symbols. Lovelace also hypothesized that the device could be capable of executing instructional steps more than once. Developers today will recognize this process as looping: a fundamental building block of writing code.
Interested in learning more about Lovelace's thoughts on the Analytical Engine? Read her notes and commentary, which were published in Scientific Memoirs Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies.
Celebrating Ada Lovelace
Lovelace's thirst for knowledge is evident in her own words, as reported by the Ada Lovelace Institute: “I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me…” Making connections across multiple disciplines, she also stated: “The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole.”
Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated on the second Tuesday in October. This year, Ada Lovelace Day will be on This day recognizes the achievements of Ada Lovelace in the computer science field, and also celebrates the achievements women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).