This is Augusta Ada King
Countess of Lovelace also known as Ada Lovelace
born in December 1815
She was a British Mathematician and writer,
who is regarded by many to be the world's first computer programmer,
Of course there weren't computers in 1815.
Just be patient and all will be explained.
She was the only child of the famous English poet Lord Byron
and his wife Anne Isabella Milbanke, Baroness
Wentworth.
Deserted by Byron, Ada's Mother remained
bitter towards him
and promoted Ada's interest in Mathematics and logic and not poetry like her father as a form of revenge.
Ada's social circle consisted of many prominent names,
and one of them was the famous polymath and inventor, Charles Babbage.
She was chosen to translate a paper from French of Babbage's famous invention, the Analytical Engine.
A mechanical genereral purpose computer.
Ada was enchanted by the Machine and started
working on ways to use it.
She wrote extensively on the machine and described
an algorithm for the Analytical Engine
to compute Bernoulli numbers.
An algorithm is a set of step by step directions
to achieve a particular result.
Ada's algorithm is considered as the first
algorithm ever specifically tailored for a computer,
and Ada has often been cited as the world's first computer programmer.
Unfortunately, Ada's scandalous private life took some of the limelight away
from her algorithm during the 19th century.
100 years later thought, computer programmers recognized her method
as the word's first computer programme.
"Ada Lovelace Day", every October, has been named after her and
aims to raise the profile of women in
science, technology, engineering and maths.
The computer language 'Ada' created on behalf of the United Stated Department of Defence
was also named after Lovelace.
And today, in St James's Square London, she has her own blue plaque as a historical marker to her memory.
