History of Computers - Ada Lovelace
Gdavies 19:08, 23 August 2011 (CDT)
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was a nineteenth-century English writer known for her work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and originating computer programming.
Contents
Biography
Early Life
Ada Lovelace was born to the Poet Lord Byron and Anna Milbanke, Baroness Wentworth[1]. Just a month after birth, Ada's parents separated, and as a result Ada was raised and taught by her mother, who had had an advanced education in science and mathematics[2]. At the age of 17 Ada was introduced to Mary Somerville, a contemporary in the sciences[3]. It was with Mrs. Somerville in 1834 that Ada first heard of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.
Work with Charles Babbage
In 1841 Charles Babbage reported on his plans for the Analytical Engine at a seminar in Italy, where an Italian by the name of Menebrea wrote an article about the Analytical Engine. The first work that Ada did with Charles Babbage was to translate that Article and while doing so she added her own notes, which were far longer than the original translation[4]. It was in section G of these notes that Ada laid out a way to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli Numbers, which is widely known as the first computer program.
Significance
Ada Lovelace's program was designed to work on the Analytical Engine, but was never used because the engine was too large and expensive for Babbage to complete. when the project was finally completed in 1991 by the London Science Museum[5], her program actually worked, using the data that she put into her notes. Ada's significance goes beyond designing the first computer program, she also stated in her notes that she believed that computers such as Babbage's could be used to make beautiful and mathematically pure music . She also believed that the engine had the potentiality to manipulate numbers in a way where they did not stand for a specific value, like how Ones and Zeroes in Binary function. Ada also believed that the engine could be used to follow on specific rule set in calculating large groups of numbers based off of a specific model[6][7]. For these reasons Ada is seen as seeing further into the future of not just calculation, but computation of data by computers. As the first computer programmer, an award in her name is given to women who excel in technology or computer science. This award is an inspiration to women who work in computer science. [8]
References
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Isabella_Milbanke
- ↑ http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm
- ↑ http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine
- ↑ http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computation
- ↑ http://www.awc-hq.org/ada-lovelace-awards.html
