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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Today is the day to appreciate the wonderful women in technology! Today we are going back to the  beginning, to the woman who is considered the very first computer programmer, Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace.
Ada was the daughter of Poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. Her mother had Ada tutored in mathematics and music, to counter the "dangerous poetic tendencies" of her father. She quickly became enraptured with mathematics and logic. Her long time friend, Charles Babbage, had invented two elaborate calculating machines, the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. She was tasked with translating a French memoir on the Analytical Machine, and the notes and appendages she added to the memoir are what led to her fame. She recognized the machine as what we now know as a computer, and even predicted that it would someday be used to generate music! Her notes contained the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine, and had the Analytical Machine ever been built, the algorithm would have worked. So let's all celebrate Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, the first computer programmer! 


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