Today December 10, 2012 Ada Lovelace received international attention and recondition for her contributions to modern day computer programming. Ada Lovelace were born on December 10, 1815 in London in the United Kingdom. Today would have been exactly 197 years ago and it is hard to believe that Ada Lovelace contributions to modern day computer programming were done so many years ago.
Although Ada Lovelace did not see her contributions to modern day computers in her life time, many today consider her works, theories and notes an important part of modern day computer software and programming.
Ada Lovelace passed away at a very early age of 36 on 27 November 1852, she died of Uterine Cancer, her illness lasted several months. Ada Lovelace was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottingham.
Ada Lovelace the Einstein of Computer Programming and Mathematics
From a very early age Ada Lovelace studied math’s and analytics, as a child she was very sick and at age 8 she suffered from extreme headaches and obscured vision. In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of the measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831 she was able to walk with crutches.
Her illness and home schooling and mothers obsession lead to her developing an obsession with numbers and math’s, she became friends with Charles Babbage an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer.
In 1812 he was sitting in his rooms in the Analytical Society looking at a table of logarithms, which he knew to be full of mistakes, when the idea occurred to him of computing all tabular functions by machinery. The French government had produced several tables by a new method. Three or four of their mathematicians decided how to compute the tables, half a dozen more broke down the operations into simple stages, and the work itself, which was restricted to addition and subtraction, was done by eighty [human] computers who knew only these two arithmetical processes. Here, for the first time, mass production was applied to arithmetic, and Babbage was seized by the idea that the labors of the unskilled computers could be taken over completely by machinery which would be quicker and more reliable.
Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage
In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Ada Lovelace notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Ada Lovelace notes as a description of a computer and software dating back more than 150 years ago.
This analysis was a conceptual leap from previous ideas about the capabilities of computing devices, and foreshadowed the capabilities and implications of the modern computer. This insight is seen as significant by writers such as Betty Toole and Benjamin Woolley, as well as programmer John Graham-Cumming, whose project Plan 28 has the aim of constructing the first complete Analytical Engine.
Ada Lovelace Google Doodle make International News
Today Google have used their Google Doodle to tell the world more about Ada Lovelace. It is believed by many that Ada Lovelace played an important role in the development of computer software and computer programs. In the Google doodle of December 10, 2012 one can see several computer devices as part of the Doodle. The words Google is also written in a lace type font which adds to the relevance of the Google Doodle to Ada Lovelace. The Google also have an cartoon image, and if looking at the resemblance between photographs of Ada Lovelace and the cartoon it is safe to assume that the cartoon character in the doodle is indeed representing Ada Lovelace.
The Ada Lovelace Google Doodle made international news and many of the top news sources around the world reported about the Ada Lovelace Google Doodle, providing Ada Lovelace and her legacy with well deserved International recondition and exposure, after all what will America, Europe, Asia and Africa been today without the invention of computers!
