October is one of our favorite months, what with #ElectronicHalloween and… Ada Lovelace Day. We hope you’re as excited as we are! Be sure to tune in to the Adafruit blog today where we’ll be sharing the stories of women that we think are modern day “Adas” alongside historical women that have made impacts in science and math. This is our 6th year celebrating Ada Lovelace Day – check out our #ALD12, #ALD13, #ALD14, #ALD15 and #ALD16 coverage!
We’re starting our #ALD17 celebration off today with the lady herself, Ada Lovelace. From Finding Ada:
Lovelace was deeply intrigued by Babbage’s plans for a tremendously complicated device he called the Analytical Engine, which was to combine the array of adding gears of his earlier Difference Engine with an elaborate punchcard operating system. It was never built, but the design had all the essential elements of a modern computer.
In 1842 Lovelace translated a short article describing the Analytical Engine by the italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, for publication in England. Babbage asked her to expand the article, “as she understood the machine so well”. The final article is over three times the length of the original and contains several early ‘computer programs,’ as well as strikingly prescient observations on the potential uses of the machine, including the manipulation of symbols and creation of music. Although Babbage and his assistants had sketched out programs for his engine before, Lovelace’s are the most elaborate and complete, and the first to be published; so she is often referred to as “the first computer programmer”. Babbage himself “spoke highly of her mathematical powers, and of her peculiar capability — higher he said than of any one he knew, to prepare the descriptions connected with his calculating machine.”
Read more here, find more source material here, and don’t miss Ada Lovelace: Victorian Comupting Visionary. Don’t forget, you can join in on the celebration too by using #ALD17 G+, Instagram & Twitter.
October 10th is Ada Lovelace Day! Today the world celebrates all of the accomplishments of women in science, art, design, technology, engineering, and math. Each year, Adafruit highlights a number of women who are pioneering their fields and inspiring women of all ages to make their voices heard. Today we will be sharing the stories of women that we think are modern day “Adas” alongside historical women that have made impacts in science and math.
Please promote and share #ALD17 with your friends and family so we can promote and share with all of the world wide web!
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