Lost Heroines | 03/24/2009 2:00 pm
Celebrate Ada Lovelace and Women in Technology
Image via Wikipedia
Do you know what today is? Well, yes, it’s Tuesday, but it’s also Ada Lovelace Day.
Now, you may be thinking, "Who the heck is Ada Lovelace?" In fact, we were thinking the same thing when our tech guru, Tom, informed us of the historic occasion.
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of George Gordon Byron, she was a countess and, as it turns out, she became the world’s first computer "programmer" when she wrote a written description for Charles Babbage’s analytical machine, a precursor to modern computers. The machine was never built, but had Babbage brought it to completion, Lovelace’s code would have helped calculate Bernoulli numbers. Those are the numbers that form a sequence of rational numbers, like the ones used on this very site to determine the day’s most-read stories.
So, without Lovelace, we wouldn’t have jobs. And you wouldn’t have wOw. It seems we should all be celebrating Lovelace’s keen intellect, huh?
Click here for more information about this incredible woman.
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7 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
I absolutely love stories like this! I’m saving this, because it I love stories that celebrate ingenuity and genius—especially when it comes to women!
:-)
Time to google and wiki to find out more about her…
Good Gravy ~ has no one read Hypathia’s Heritage? I must have purchased a full carton of that book and given it to anyone who would read it! Everyone, please read it.
The History of Science and history of scientific thought was a later MS of mine (b/c I had so many science credits!) and what fun that was for me heading into my mid-life years. Try it! Women lead, and led.
Mdme Curie, for example, and no one dares to say our suffragettes were not scientific minded women! We have no groups like that today, but we should.
Have any of you "marched" for your beliefs, and/or for the needs of others? If not, it’s time. Try it, you’ll like it. ;-))
Reminds me, I need to change my icon!
Last week I visited The Museum of the 99’s (at the Oklahoma City airport), dedicated to the early women pilots. I never knew about the "mercury 13." These were 13 women who went through the exact same tests that the first male astronauts went through but they never got to fly. Johnson wouldn’t allow it. Here’s to Jackie Cockran - first woman to break the sound barrier and to Chuck Yeager who supported her in it.
Suzanne Arruda www.suzannearruda.com http://suzannearruda.blogspot.com/