Ada Lovelace Script
Just like Sally Ride, another My girl Hero,
Ada Lovelace was not just an amazing woman,
she also had a really cool name.
Ada Lovelace was the first person to write
anything like a computer program.
This may not sound like a big deal to you,
but the computer hadn't even been invented
yet!
How is that even possible?
Ada's dad was a famous poet in England about
200 years ago so you'd think she would have
grown up to be a famous poet too.
But her dad, Lord Byron, wasn't a very good
father and left Ada and her Mom when she was
just a baby.
As she grew up.
Ada's mom didn't want her to be anything like
her dad so she pushed Ada to study things
that her dad didn't like or know about like
science and math.
This was a lucky coincidence because Ada thought
those things were pretty cool anyway.
When she was a teenager, she became friends
with the man who is now called the father
of computers, Charles Babbage.
I thought maybe Mr. Babbage married Ms. Apple
but my dad says it doesn't work like that.
So Babbage did it the hard way and used pen
and paper to design a kind of early computer
he called an Analytical Engine.
Ada not only loved the idea but she was one
of the few people who really understood what
a cool thing it was.
I guess it was like seeing drawings of the
first iPhone and knowing that it could do
more than order a pizza.
In 1843 Ada decided to help Babbage by translating
an article that a guy with a bunch of medals
on his chest named Luigi Menabrea had written
in Italian.
It talked about how great Babbage's Analytical
Engine was and how it worked.
The problem was that smart people back in
England didn't understand it very well.
So Ada not only translated it from Italian
into English but she wrote a computer program
on the end of it to show what it could do.
She didn't call it a computer program but
that's what it was: the world's first computer
program.
It's a good thing she did too otherwise I
couldn't play Super Mario.
Ada is also famous for thinking about stuff
that the Analytical Engine could do.
She wrote in letters about how she wondered
if it could write beautiful music or draw
pictures.
Ada wasn't just dreaming, she was thinking
about HOW it would happen by turning these
real life things into numbers that the engine
could work on.
So Ada isn't just my hero, she's the hero
of anyone who likes to play computer games
or listen to music on an iPhone.
Thank you Ada!
