Ada Lovelace
By: Ariella Sato-Baran ‘25 Women In STEM: Issue 4.
The First Computer Programmer From opening the door of Olin with your keycard to typing up an essay for your class, almost everything in this world uses a code sequence to give out an output. When computers were first invented, they were huge, heavy, and more expensive to build than the desktop computers sold in Apple stores today. Their only purpose was to calculate tedious equations, like a less versatile calculator. But if computers were initially designed only to calculate complex and repetitive mathematical equations, who first saw the possibility of this future of automatic doors and minuscule pixelated screens?
Who Is She?
On December 10th, 1815 Augusta Ada King-Noel, was born in London (1). She was the daughter of the famed poet George Byron and Annabella Milbanke, though many know her as Ada Lovelace from when she became the Countess of Lovelace later in her life.
Lovelace’s father was imaginative and saw life through rose-colored lenses, while her mother was factual and logical. The stark difference in personality between them created discord in the two’s marriage, and only four months after Lovelace was born, the two divorced (2). Annabella moved with Lovelace to the countryside of England while George sailed across to Greece, where he later died when she was eight (1).
Childhood/ Early Life: To prevent her from having a quick-tempered and irate nature like her father, her mother hired mathematics and science tutors instead of tutors focused on the arts, unlike typical aristocratic families of the time (2). Even at an early age, Lovelace’s prowess and natural intellect in the field of mathematics were apparent; however, she was also very imaginative and curious, like her father. An example of her nature is when, through thorough observation of birds at the age of 13, Lovelace composed and illustrated a guide on “Flyology” which recorded her findings and design on a flying machine based on her wish to fly like a bird (2-3). When she was only 17, Lovelace met Charles Babbage in 1833 at Cambridge University. They quickly became close friends through their shared interest in mathematics and soon after, he became a mentor to her. Babbage is most well-known as the “father of the computer” (3) due to his invention of the Difference engine and Analytical engine.
The Difference engine is a complex machine that calculates and tabulates polynomial functions. The Analytical engine, in contrast, was made to be able to perform any calculations given. It had four components: the mill, the store, the reader, and the printer (4). The mill was the calculating unit, analogous to our modern-day CPUs, and the store was where data was stored (memory and storage). The reader and printer are the input and output devices (4). Though never completed, the Analytical engine was the first ever mechanical generalpurpose computer proposed. However, it was only when Lovelace suggested the computational possibilities of the engine that it became seen as the first computer. HYPATIA JOURNAL
|
13
