When we think of computers we remember people like Charles Babbage, John Von Neuman, or maybe Alan Turing but only very few remember The Code Poetess.
Early Age
Ada LoveLace was born to the famed Poet Lord Bayron and Annabella was separated from her father by her mother Annabella, to not let young Ada Bayron to be like her father who fancied extremes of gambling and immoral addictions. Thus ensuring that Ada doesn’t turnout like her father, Annabella allowed her education to not include anything related to poet the only allowed studies were in the field of Mathematics, Geography, Engineering and a few. Due to her innate talent was tutored by Augustus De Morgan who formulated De Morgan’s laws.
Analytical Engine
Ada at the age of Seventeen met Charles Babbage at one of London Season( A Fashionable Social gathering of London High Society in early Victorian era).
Impressed by Ada’s Mathematical Intellect Charles invited Ada and Annabella to his house where Ada was first Introduced to the mechanical calculating machines ("mechanical universe"). Which captivated her for a lifetime,
Charles and Ada became firm friends corresponding frequently on the interest.
Later in 1835 Ada met William King and got married in the same year , and had three children.
And she got back to her work in mathematics.
At the same time Charles Babbage came up with his Ideas of Analytical Engine, now Charles being a Thin-Skinned man like Newton and Gauss didn’t publish his ideas ; such that he stopped giving lectures as people misunderstood him and he was booed. But still royal institutions asked him to give lectures on Analytical Engine but then he declined , but then he was invited to Italian Society, an equivalent of royal society of London, but this time he went and gave his lecture.
There in amidst one of those who heard his lectures was Luigi Federico Menabrea who took detailed notes and published them as a paper in a French Journal.
Now that Journal got into the hands of Ada and she had the insight of Babbage’s earlier works and was one of the acclaimed mathematicians herself improved a lot of it and published it in English. By the end of her copious notes she asks ; “Have you thought? , Could this Wonderful Engine of Babbage’s Compose a Music?”.
(Later in Charles Babbage’s auto-biography he mentions Ada Lovelace as Enchantress of Numbers.)
Final Days
Ada In 1840s was gravely ill and her mother moved in with Ada and her spouse to take care of Ada.
In her final moments she requested her husband; not to bury her in the lovelace estate but beside the grave of her poet father.
Ada Lovelace Has many names; The First Programmer , Code Poetess, Poetical Scientist, Enchantress of Numbers etc.
She was born in a Victorian Era, an Era where women where not treated equally yet she proves that no matter the societal norms it is the hard work and thirst for knowledge that win
