Introducing Ada Lovelace!
She was the  first computer programmer and she died when she was only 36.
Here's me in my cot with my abacus getting a head start
I'm really clever I'm going to be a maths
sensation ANDI got an education which
most girls didn't in my day.  Where did
I get those brain cells from? right here
my mother Annabella  - extremely religious, a bit square,  very clever and totally
uptight!  how she got together with my
father Lord Byron I don't know.  He liked
her brains I think.  he was a real catch
handsome, a cool poet, and writer and very
popular with the girls in fact a total
hunk but he had a terrible temper and he
drank a lot.  Well that didn't last long!
Old Byron cleared off before I was a year
old and he never saw me again -  thanks a
lot mate!  Mum didn't want me growing up
like my dad she thought he was nuts so
when I was still tiny she fixed me up
with a really strict tutor who drilled
me in maths astronomy algebra geometry
OUF!  and as if that wasn't bad enough she threatened me too!  Said if I didn't work
hard I'd be locked in a dingy cold room
full of cobwebs.  "10 out of 10 or
otherwise it's in the cupboard with you!"
Charles Babbage was one of the big
science celebrities in my day he was a
general brain box, mathematician,
philosopher, inventor, engineer -  a polymath is what they call it as well as having a
name that rhymes with cabbage!  my old
teacher Mary Somerville was a friend of
Mr. Babbage and so I wangled invitations
to his little show-and-tell parties
where he told us about his calculating
machine the Difference Engine the first
machine made to calculate numbers this is a model he built
people say it was the first computer but
it had to be powered by steam!
And turned with a handle -  we didn't have batteries or electricity when I was around
Well I was totally knocked out by it!  and I
wasn't the only one!
The writer Charles Dickens the famous
nurse Florence Nightingale, Michael
Faraday the inventor of the motor engine
and even Charles Darwin all thought it
was pretty amazing too  Mr. Babbage then designed an EVEN MORE complicated
machine called the Analytical Engine
this was the first real computer because
it was designed to calculate not just
numbers but to do other difficult tasks
even composing music
the only explanation of this machine was
in French and I translated it and added
my own notes about this exciting new
computer and my totally new and original
thought was that it could follow a
step-by-step series of operations to
solve problems  - what we call an algorithm
that's why I'm known as the first
computer programmer because until then
no one had understood this. My notes were three times longer than the original
everyone was very impressed.  
Listen there are a couple of things I
didn't tell you because I'm keeping it
short but I got married and I managed to
have three children but my whole life
long I'd always been rather sickly and
weak and when I was only 36 I became
very seriously ill.  If you're squeamish
block your ears because in my day
doctors thought that bloodletting was a
good idea where they cut open your veins
and let your blood out because they
thought that was the problem.  Of course I didn't survive and I had so much more to
do, but I'm glad that my name lives on
today as the woman known as the first
computer programmer.  Don't forget me!
