Ada Lovelace – The First Female Programmer

I have written about the famous female programmer in which I have mentioned the most famous female programmers along with the very first female programmer, Ada Lovelace. Today I have come up with detailed information about her. Hope you will enjoy reading about this awesome personality.

Who was Ada Lovelace?

Ada Lovelace was the first Female computer programmer who was a mathematics genius worked with Charles Babbage to build a mechanical device named “the difference engine”. She also utilized his knowledge while working with another machine “Analytical Engine” to solve the mathematical problems. Then she was familiar with Babbage’s work and gave a set of instructions to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Contribution of the Ada Lovelace to the field of computer was not exposed until 1950, but the U.S Department of Defense named a newly established computer language “Ada” in the year 1980.

Child life of Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815, for the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. The poet seemed moody and unpredictable temperament sometimes, so her mother left him and took Ada with her. After a few months, Byron left England and died due to disease when Ada was eight years old. Ada’s mother decided to appoint some tutors for maths and science to prevent Ada from developing her father’s behavior. She also believed that these teaching activities would help her to improve her self-control activity.

Teenage years of Ada

When Ada was 17 years old, she was introduced to an excellent mathematician named “Mrs. Somerville” and she was greatly inspired by this tutor. Mrs. Somerville had two daughters at the same age of Ada and they all attended the geography lectures at the University of London. That time,  Ada had a friendship with a British mathematician “Charles Babbage”. Babbage had a calculating machine used to determine the polynomial equation for a table of data and he had some preliminary plans for his sophisticated machine “Analytical Engine”.  Ada was riveted with the concept of these machines and interested to work with Babbage to invent the world’s the first computer.

Programming life of Ada Lovelace

In the year 1845, Ada got married, had three daughters and her husband “Lord William” became Earl of Lovelace. Then Babbage was helped by the government to create the trigonometric values for British Navy with his difference engine. An Italian named Menabrea published a French article with the description of Babbage’s machine. Ada translated this article by adding her own mathematical notes and the article turned big.

She predicted and added in her notes that the machine of Babbage might be used to produce graphics, compose complex music and could be used for scientific and practical purposes. Ada converted the translated article usefully and her predictions were correct.  She turned an excellent mathematical task manager and proposed that the numbers, letters, and symbols could be coded as data for the engine of Babbage.

She also included the details of memory, backing process, storehouses and various control cards to execute a specific set of operations in her notes. She explained that the versatile engine of Babbage could hold the trigonometric functions and possibility of creating tables using prime numbers by a looping program.   She suggested Babbage write a plan for his engine to calculate the Bernoulli numbers and it was the first computer program.

End of Ada Lovelace

Ada died on 27th November 1852 in England. Her notes are considered important in the early history of computers. Even though she predicted quality information in the field of the computer before 150 years back, she had no direct influence on this field. In the year 1940, computer scientists slowly rediscovered her valuable notes and invented new programs. But a computer language called “Ada” has been built like a monument to Lovelace by the U.S Department of Defence.

I hope you have inspired the life history of the first Female computer programmer “Ada Lovelace”. Isn’t it? Share your views about her through comments.