Celebrating Ada Lovelace day
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What is Ada Lovelace Day?
Ada Lovelace Day is a day to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM. It is celebrated on the second Tuesday of October every year.
The day was created by Suw Charman-Anderson in 2009 and it has been celebrated annually since then. The day is named after Ada Lovelace, who was a mathematician and computer scientist. She was also the daughter of Lord Byron, an English poet and writer.
Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise awareness about women’s achievements in STEM fields and inspire more girls to pursue careers in these fields.
How can I celebrate Ada Lovelace Day?
There are many ways – you could watch some of the free online events being broadcast on Facebook and YouTube or take part in some of the events that are local to you.
Who is Ada Lovelace?
Ada Lovelace is often considered the world’s first computer programmer. She was born in 1815 and died in 1852. She was the daughter of Lord Byron, a famous poet, and Anne Isabella Milbanke, a mathematician.
She was introduced to Charles Babbage’s work on his Analytical Engine and she became fascinated with it. She translated an article by Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea on the engine and added her own notes which were three times as long as the original text. Her notes contain what many consider to be the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine.
The published algorithm could calculate Bernoulli Numbers and this was used as an example to show that the machine could calculate using its built in formulae of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
While Babbage intended the machine for mathematical purposes, Ada saw much more potential for future designs of the device, surmising that future machines, given the right input, could play music or potentially create images.
Babbage’s Analytical Engine was never completed in his lifetime and Ada never got to test her algorithm on the machine either. Her life was unfortunately cut short at 36, but who knows what she could have achieved given more time?
The work that she did produce however, was ground breaking and at least 100 years ahead of her time and for this she rightly deserves the title of the first computer programmer.