Ada Lovelace, pioneer of computing and historical female figure

Ada Lovelace is a pioneer in technology with the creation of her analytical engine, the ancestor of the modern computer

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Ada Lovelace is above all a pioneer, a woman who marked the history of computing. She is considered the "first geek in the world". 

Born in London on December 10, 1815, Ada Lovelace is the daughter of the poet Lord Byron and the intellectual Annabella Milbanke. And her story is also that of women pioneers of their time. 

In the Victorian era, men dominated the field of science, at least in public debates. But the first woman to play a role in Ada's life was her mother, Annabella. Indeed, it was she who raised her daughter alone and, quite early on, provided her with a rigorous and in-depth education in mathematics. A scientific education meant to keep Ada away from her father's literary concerns... and what a good idea that was!

In 1832, Ada was 17 years old and she didn't know it yet, but she was about to meet someone who would considerably accelerate the genius of her short life. Mary Sommerville, a renowned scientist of her time, became the new tutor of the teenager. Besides continuing to stimulate Ada's intellect, Mary Sommerville was the one who introduced her to the renowned mathematician Charles Babbage aka* the father of modern computers. 

*Aka = As known as = also known as

Ada became passionate about the mathematician's difference engine and that's where the future of computing is at stake. This was followed by a decade of exchanges that allowed Ada to develop her mathematical skills and follow the evolution of Babbage's first calculator.

But Babbage was ambitious, and he didn't stop at a simple calculator, no. Soon after, he embarked on the creation of the analytical engine, a principle that, through the sequential reading of punched cards, would give instructions and data to his machine. There you have it, the first modern computer.  

Meanwhile, Ada became a mother, she had three children, Byron, Annabella, and Ralph Gordon, and the mental load linked to this new job made her forget about computing for a while. It was in 1839 that she got back to it, helped by the mathematician Auguste de Morgan, who trained her in algebra, logic, and analysis.

Three years later, a description of Babbage's analytical engine was published in French, and Ada was offered the chance to translate this document into English. But not only that; Babbage proposed that she complete, correct, and annotate the said document. It is one of these notes that made Ada Lovelace famous. It contains a very detailed algorithm for calculating a sequence of rational numbers, an algorithm considered the first computer program in the world.

She already imagined this machine as being capable of composing music. But she died at the age of 36 from uterine cancer, ruined and undoubtedly without the slightest idea of the future progress of today's computing.

Her work is the foundation of that of Alan Turing, 100 years later, without ever being cited. Her name first appeared to name the programming language of the US Department of Defense in the 1980s.

A copy of this historical manuscript, translated and annotated by Ada, was sold at auction for 107,000€ (95,000£), the final touch of the portrait of a resolutely modern woman. 

Ada declared: “The analytical engine has no pretension to create anything by itself. It can perform anything we know how to give it to perform. It can follow an analysis; but it has no ability to invent analytical relations or truths. Its role is to help us carry out what we already master. ” 

Even with the arrival of Big Data, her statement is still valid today…