This year Ada Lovelace Day is today! In celebration, sites around the world are spotlighting women in math and science. To learn more about this and read some amazing stories, visit the site Finding Ada.
I thought I’d instead revamp a blog post I did last year on just who she is and give a round up of awesome Ada news that happened this past year.
If you’re a new visitor to the site, you might first be wondering why I care about Lady Lovelace? Well, besides thinking she was made of awesome, she’s my main secondary character in my time travel romance MUST LOVE BREECHES, for which I just found an agent, so it will be on submission with publishers soon. I purposely picked 1834 as the year my heroine time travels to so she could meet Lady Lovelace when she was still single (and known as Miss Byron).
So, who was she?
Steampunk lovers know her as one of the character’s in William Gibson and Bruce Sterling‘s alternate history novel The Difference Engine
Computer programmers might have heard of her, because she’s credited as being the world’s first computer programmer. In fact, the United States Defense Department named their new computer language, unveiled back in 1980, ADA.
Want to really understand the power and importance of Lovelace and Babbage’s work? Watch this great video giving the background and also plans to build the Analytical Engine.
Did you know, though, that she was the only legitimate daughter of that bad boy of English poetry, Lord Byron?
Another cool fact: she actually, as a child, tried to invent a steam-powered horse! She was so steampunk! She had her scientific pen pals send her dead birds so she could measure wing span to body mass. I’m not making this up.
Besides The Difference Engine, she’s also a main character in this novel: Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land (P.S.)
She’s a main character of a webcomic by Sydney Padua called 2D Goggles, or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. This past year they announced the comics will finally be in book form! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage- BOOK!. They also now have a Lovelace & Babbage app for the iPad!
And someone made a LEGO mini figurine!
Are you now scratching your head wondering why you’d never heard of her? (If you already have, yay!).
This last year in Lady Lovelace land:
- This month a new book was announced: “James Essinger’s ADA’S THINKING MACHINE, exploring two interwoven human stories – the story of a man, Charles Babbage (1791-1871) and that of a woman, twenty-four years his junior, Ada Lovelace (1815-1851) and their involvement in the Analytical Engine, to Gibson Square, for publication in July 2013 (world).”
- Lady Lovelace made The Guardian’s list: The Guardian’s Open 20: fighters for internet freedom
- Initially it was reported that Steve Job’s biographer will write Lady Lovelace’s biography next (which I was doing a happy dance about), but then it was reported that it will be about the history of digital information and so she will only be how the book opens.
- In the weird department, she got a giant tunnel boring machine named after her in the UK
- During the SOPA battle, she got a nice shout out from HuffPo: SOPA Blackout: Why Wikipedia Needs Women
- The Guardian did an article called Game changers: the women who make video games which had a shout out to Lady Lovelace at the end
- A group of scientists will soon be starting a ten-year project to construct Babbage’s Analytical Engine
- The first AdaCamp was held in Melbourne, Australia
Totally sold? Halloween’s coming up! Here’s a page on Lady Lovelace and how you can make an Ada Lovelace costume for Halloween
Blog/News posts and other cool linkages:
- A theatre in Philly will be producing the play Childe Byron about her struggle to learn more about her father, Lord Byron.
- A delightful peek at some of the letters she wrote to Michael Faraday
- City A.M., Why Steve Jobs owes thanks to Ada Lovelace
- BBC broadcast, Lovelace
- Beth Dunn, Lady Ada At Your Service, who didn’t know she was channeling Ada as a child
- Virtual Victorian, ADA LOVELACE AND THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE…
- Sci-fi movie, Conceiving Ada
Biographies:
- The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron’s Daughter
– most comprehensive, IMO
- Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age
- Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Byron’s Legitimate Daughter
– not my fave. Mostly about her parents.
I chuckled when I saw this. I didn’t realise so much has been written about her. My only question, Angela, is how did she meet her husband since she was single in Breeches, and who was he and he was a man who could handle such an astonishing woman (obviously))
Reblogged this on Ella Quinn ~ Author and commented:
A Regency lady who’s work and reputation have survived the ages. Thanks to Angela Quarles for this post.
Hi Angela. Great post. I tweeted and rebloged.
Thank you!
I forwarded the information on to the Byron list. Ada is an interesting character. I don’t think she had a particularly happy life.Her husband wasn’t so much mean as conventional and Ada was not. Her mother was a big drag on her doing anything. She ahd her taught mathematics but didn’t want her using the knowledge for anything. Ada wasn’t a disciplined mathematician. Like all too many others with some mathematical ability she tried to use it in gambling and lost her chemise. There have been some articles written trying to disparage her accomplishments. However, the arguments in favor of her accomplishments and contribution seem stronger.
Hard to fond a truly objective biography of her.
Yeah, pretty much her whole life sucked. I really wish I could strangle her mother and yep on her husband it seems like he was Lady Byron’s toady until right near the end of ADA’s life when he seemed to get a clue.
Which Byron list?
a rather moribund Byron@yahoogroups.com list.
It has been quiet for some time except for the items I send there.
Very interesting post. Thanks for sharing.
This is the very model of the linky-post that keeps on giving, loaded with tantalizing pictures (teenage steampunk inventor would be one of them). I’m still working my way through the resources here.