Ada Lovelace - The National Center of Women's Innovations

The World’s First Computer Programmer

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation. She was also the first to develop an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. While that machine was never built, many consider her to be the first computer programmer.

But first, consider how amazing this accomplishment was for its time (1843), and how young Ada Byron –the only legitimate daughter of the Romantic poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron–came to be a mathematical genius in an age when young girls were brought up to be ladies, mothers, and the keepers of society. She would later describe her approach to mathematics as “poetical science” and herself as an “Analyst & Metaphysician.”

Barely a month after her birth, Lord Byron separated from his wife, Anne Isabelle Milbanke, a brilliant woman in her own right who Byron once referred to as “Princess of the Parallelogram.” Determined to keep Ada as far away as possible from poetic pursuits and potential insanity, Lady Byron immersed her young daughter in mathematics, music, logic and science. At the age of 11, young Ada produced the design for a flying machine powered by steam, a concept she dubbed “flyology.” Her short life would be a struggle between emotion and reason, poetics and mathematics, poor health and enormous productivity.

Ada and her mother moved in an elite London society where there were no “professional” scientists, and the participation of noblewoman in intellectual pursuits was not encouraged. At a soirée, she met Charles Babbage, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, also known as “the father of computers” and the inventor of the Difference Engine, an elaborate calculating machine that operated by the method of finite differences. When Ada met Babbage in 1833 she was just 17. These two unconventional personalities corresponded for many years on the topics of mathematics, logic, and other subjects. He would later call her the “Enchantress of Numbers.”

In 1835, at the age of 19, Ada married William King, an aristocrat and erstwhile scientist. He was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, and thus Ada became the Countess of Lovelace. After her third child was born, she returned to the study of mathematics, hiring a “mathematical Instructor” in London. That gentleman was August De Morgan, first professor of mathematics at University College London, noted logician, and author of several textbooks.

By 1834, Babbage had made plans for a new kind of calculating machine, an Analytical Engine, which piqued Lovelace’s interest. It would use punched cards of the kind that had been invented in 1801 by Jacquard for specifying patterns of weaving on looms. In 1842, an Italian mathematician, Louis Menebrea (later prime minister of Italy), published a memoir in French on the subject of this new machine. Babbage’s friend Charles Wheatstone enlisted Lovelace as translator, and during a nine-month period in 1842-43, she worked diligently on the article and a set of Notes she appended to it. Note G contained a method for computing a series of Bernouli numbers, an arcane, brain-teasing sequence which, had the machine actually been built, might have worked. Her work was well received at the time; the scientist Michael Faraday described himself as a supporter of her writing.

In 1953, more than a century after her untimely death from cancer, Ada Byron Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B. V. Bowden‘s Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer, and her notes as a description of a computer and software. The computer language Ada, created by the US Department of Defense, was named in her honor.

Of perhaps greater significance, this mid 19^th century woman developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere number-crunching. Her notes envision future developments, including the manipulation of symbols and computer-generated music. Her “poetic” mindset led her to examine how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool. She valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring “the unseen worlds around us.” In a prescient self-assessment, she wrote: “That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.”

The second Tuesday of October is now known as “Ada Lovelace Day” to raise the profile of women to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and to create new role models for girls and women – precisely the mission of the National Center of Women’s Innovations. Help support 2Herstory, NCWI’s comprehensive data file of women’s innovators to assure young girls have the role models they need to fill the shoes of their foremothers and workforce needs.

Awards and Accolades

1981 Ada Lovelace Award inaugurated by Association for Women in Computing

1998 British Computer Society awards the Lovelace Medal, later initiates an annual competition for women students and an annual colloquium in her name

2009 Ada Lovelace Day begins as day of blogging; since becomes a multi-national event highlighting diverse accomplishments of women in STEM

2015 All British passports begin to carry image of Lovelace and Babbage

2018 NY Times publishes belated obituary of Lovelace

2018 Satellogic, a high-resolution Earth observation imaging and analytics company, launches a micro-satellite named in her honor

2020 Trinity College Dublin commissions four new busts of women for the library, one of them of Lovelace

2022 Statue of Ada Lovelace installed at the site of the former Ergon House in the City of Westminster, London, honoring its scientific history

2022 Nvidia announces Ada Lovelacee graphics processing unit (GPU) micro-architecture

2023 UK’s Royal Mint issues four commemorative £2 coins in various metals to “honour the innovative contributions of computer science visionary Ada Lovelace and her legacy as a female trailblazer”

Numerous articles, books, plays, television programs showcasing her accomplishments Awards and Accolades