Augusta Ada

Augusta Ada King.

Amazing Fact:First computer programmer.

Country:England.

Ada Lovelace was best known as the first computer programmer. She was also known as Analyst, Metaphysician, and Founder of Scientific Computing.

August Ada Byron was born in London, England on December 10, 1815, the daughter of the illustrious poet, Lord Byron. Five weeks after Ada was born Lady Byron asked for a separation from Lord Byron. Ada never met her father (who died in Greece in 1823) and was raised by her mother, Lady Byron. One night, in November 1834, at a dinner party, Ada heard Babbage's ideas for a new calculating engine, the "Analytical Engine." In 1842, an Italian mathematician, Louis Menebrea, published a memoir in French on the subject of the Analytical Engine. Babbage enlisted Ada as translator for the memoir, and during a nine-month period in 1842-43, she worked feverishly on the article and a set of Notes she appended to it. These are the source of her enduring fame.

Published in 1843, Lady Lovelace's prescient comments included her predictions that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use. Her Notes anticipate future developments. Ada suggested to Babbage writing a plan for how the engine might calculate Bernoulli numbers. This plan is now regarded as the first "computer program."

A software language developed by the U.S. Department of Defense was named "Ada" in her honor in 1979.She died very young at the age of 37 of cancer in 1852 and was buried beside the father she never knew.

courtesy for pictures:http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/PictDisplay/Lovelace.htm