How Ada Lovelace Shaped Computing

Ada Byron, born today in 1815, was the daughter of the famous English poet, Lord Byron, and Annabella Milbanke. Her mother, Milbanke, was described as a religiously fervent woman with a penchant for mathematics, and her husband, Lord Byron, reportedly described her as his "princess of parallelograms." Their daughter, Ada, inherited her father's mercurial temper, but her mother's mathematical skill. And it was fortunate she did so.

Today, Google is celebrating the 197th birthday of Ada Lovelace - considered to be the world's first computer programmer - with a homepage doodle that honors her contributions to computer science.

In 1835, Ada Byron married William King, her former mathematics tutor. King was later made the Earl of Lovelace, and Ada became known as the Countess of Lovelace; history, for some reason, attached “Lovelace” as her surname. Ada’s intelligence and social standing won her introductions to the leading minds of the day, and her friendship with scientific researcher Mary Somerville allowed her to meet the distinguished mathematician Charles Babbage, whose descriptions of a Difference Engine and, later, the Revolutionary Analytical Engine, essentially created the first computer.

But it was Lovelace’s translation of Luigi Menebrea’s account of the Analytical Engine that brought Lovelace fame. While the translation was admirable enough, it was Lovelace’s “notes” at the end - a dissection of the Engine’s potential as operation, as well as the first “computer program” describing how to use it - that justifies her place in history. Lovelace also had the lucky fortune of providing a scientific “exclusive,” - Babbage was reluctant to publish much on his invention, leaving Lovelace’s work to stand largely alone.

In some ways, Lovelace’s contributions to science mirror German actress Hedy Lamarr, who co-invented the early process of spread-spectrum communications, which uses frequency hopping to prevent interference among wireless communications. Unlike Lamarr, whose claim to fame was really as a film actress, Lovelace was well respected as a mathematician first and foremost.

According to Wikipedia, Ada Lovelace had three children, and had amassed considerable gambling debts before dying from cancer on Nov. 27, 1852. For more on her contributions, click through to the slideshow.