Augusta Ada Byron Countess of Lovelace 1815 to 1852
Initials A.A.L   A.A.L   A.A.L   A.A.L
12 year old Ada envisioned flying machines
Her mother said in math and science you must ground your dreams
She was tutored by Mary Somerville, math and astronomy
And then she met Charles Babbage in 1833
When she was 17
He demonstrated a portion of a calculating machine
Named the Difference Engine, Ada found it captivating
Soon Ada became Babbage’s protége
She dreamed of flying machines
Before her time, she was a visionary
Computer programmer before it was a thing
Ada Lovelace
Prophet of the Computer Age
Babbage knew the Difference Engine wasn’t all it could be and imagined a more complex calculating machine
Fed punch cards like a loom with reader, printer, mill, and store
Like a modern computer, The Analytical Engine was born.
Babbage lectured in Turin, 1840
Menabrea was listening about the Analytical Engine
Published what he heard in 1842
But it was written in French and there was more to be told
Ada translated, expanded
Her paper was three times as long
And she wrote, wrote, wrote
Notes, notes, notes
Babbage saw the Engine only as mathematical
But Lovelace saw more,
multi-functional
With codes it could handle letters, music, and symbols
She dreamed of flying machines
Before her time, she was a visionary
Computer programmer before it was a thing
Ada Lovelace
Prophet of the Computer Age
And in Note G, she wrote, wrote, wrote
That the machine could be programmed with a code, code, code
A sequence of operations to calculate
The Bernoulli numbers recursively
Quantities fetched from the Store used for calculation in the Mill
All based on instructions from a deck of punched cards
Illustrated in a table
Like an execution trace
The first computer program, written by Ada Lovelace
