Today is Ada Lovelace Day. She was the world’s first programmer. She was so good, she was able to write code for a machine that didn’t exist. Time passed. Actual, physical computers showed up around town. The U.S. Department of Defense got in on that action. They created a programming language and named it for her. It’s still around. It’s a pretty advanced language, but she was a pretty advanced person. Not only was she a versatile mathematician and pre-computer proto-programmer, but she was also one of those 19th century social types who brought together all sorts of intellectual stars from different fields. She knew Lord Byron (as he was her father), as well as Charles Babbage, of course, the “father of the computer,” and a good thing, too, because without any program to run, his computer would look pretty silly indeed. A big, theoretical paperweight, really.
All the bloggy people were supposed to write something in honor of another woman in technology for Ada Lovelace Day, but I only just found out about this event, and the day’s nearly over, so I’ll just link to this very old post about Marie Curie. It may be slightly inaccurate. Another time, I’ll write something nice about Caroline Herschel, a lesser known woman from the history of science, and one of my personal favorites.
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