57 Facts About Ada Lovelace

1.

Ada Lovelace's was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine.

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2.

Ada Lovelace Byron was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and Lady Byron.

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3.

Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada Lovelace was born and left England forever.

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4.

Ada Lovelace described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst ".

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5.

Ada Lovelace's was in particular interested in Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine.

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6.

Ada Lovelace first met him in June 1833, through their mutual friend, and her private tutor, Mary Somerville.

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7.

Between 1842 and 1843, Ada Lovelace translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea about the Analytical Engine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of notes, simply called "Notes".

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8.

Ada Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers, containing what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.

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9.

Ada Lovelace's developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.

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10.

Ada Lovelace was not shown the family portrait of her father until her 20th birthday.

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11.

Ada Lovelace's was often left in the care of her maternal grandmother Judith, Hon.

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12.

Ada Lovelace dubbed these observers the "Furies" and later complained they exaggerated and invented stories about her.

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13.

Ada Lovelace Byron went about the project methodically, thoughtfully, with imagination and passion.

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14.

Ada Lovelace's considered various materials for the wings: paper, oilsilk, wires, and feathers.

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15.

Ada Lovelace's examined the anatomy of birds to determine the right proportion between the wings and the body.

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16.

Ada Lovelace's decided to write a book, Flyology, illustrating, with plates, some of her findings.

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17.

Ada Lovelace's decided what equipment she would need; for example, a compass, to "cut across the country by the most direct road", so that she could surmount mountains, rivers, and valleys.

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18.

Ada Lovelace's tried to elope with him after she was caught, but the tutor's relatives recognised her and contacted her mother.

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19.

Ada Lovelace never met her younger half-sister, Allegra, the daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont.

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20.

Ada Lovelace became close friends with her tutor Mary Somerville, who introduced her to Charles Babbage in 1833.

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21.

Ada Lovelace's had a strong respect and affection for Somerville, and they corresponded for many years.

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22.

Ada Lovelace's was presented at Court at the age of seventeen "and became a popular belle of the season" in part because of her "brilliant mind".

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23.

Ada Lovelace's danced often and was able to charm many people, and was described by most people as being dainty, although John Hobhouse, Byron's friend, described her as "a large, coarse-skinned young woman but with something of my friend's features, particularly the mouth".

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24.

Ada Lovelace quickly fell for her and encouraged her to express any frustrated affections, claiming that his marriage meant he would never act in an "unbecoming" manner.

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25.

Ada Lovelace's had a shadowy relationship with Andrew Crosse's son John from 1844 onwards.

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26.

Ada Lovelace's bequeathed him the only heirlooms her father had personally left to her.

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27.

Ada Lovelace's was privately educated in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King, and Mary Somerville, the noted 19th-century researcher and scientific author.

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28.

Ada Lovelace often questioned basic assumptions through integrating poetry and science.

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29.

Ada Lovelace believed that intuition and imagination were critical to effectively applying mathematical and scientific concepts.

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30.

Ada Lovelace's valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring "the unseen worlds around us".

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31.

Ada Lovelace died at the age of 36 on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer.

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32.

The illness lasted several months, in which time Annabella took command over whom Ada Lovelace saw, and excluded all of her friends and confidants.

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33.

Under her mother's influence, Ada Lovelace had a religious transformation and was coaxed into repenting of her previous conduct and making Annabella her executor.

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34.

Ada Lovelace's was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.

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35.

Ada Lovelace first met Charles Babbage in June 1833, through their mutual friend Mary Somerville.

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36.

Ada Lovelace's became fascinated with the machine and used her relationship with Somerville to visit Babbage as often as she could.

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37.

On 12 August 1851, when she was dying of cancer, Ada Lovelace wrote to him asking him to be her executor, though this letter did not give him the necessary legal authority.

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38.

Ada Lovelace's then augmented the paper with notes, which were added to the translation.

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39.

Ada Lovelace spent the better part of a year doing this, assisted with input from Babbage.

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40.

Ada Lovelace's notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G In note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers.

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41.

Ada Lovelace's realised the potential of the device extended far beyond mere number crunching.

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42.

Ada Lovelace saw something that Babbage in some sense failed to see.

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43.

Not only is there no evidence that Ada Lovelace ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so.

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44.

Bruce Collier, who later wrote a biography of Babbage, wrote in his 1970 Harvard University PhD thesis that Ada Lovelace "made a considerable contribution to publicizing the Analytical Engine, but there is no evidence that she advanced the design or theory of it in any way".

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45.

Ada Lovelace explained that Ada was only a "promising beginner" instead of genius in mathematics, that she began studying basic concepts of mathematics five years after Babbage conceived the analytical engine so she could not have made important contributions to it, and that she only published the first computer program instead of actually writing it.

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46.

Ada Lovelace is portrayed in Romulus Linney's 1977 play Childe Byron.

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47.

In Tom Stoppard's 1993 play Arcadia, the precocious teenage genius Thomasina Coverly—a character "apparently based" on Ada Lovelace —comes to understand chaos theory, and theorises the second law of thermodynamics, before either is officially recognised.

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48.

Ada Lovelace's is employed as an "analyst" to provide the workings of a life-sized humanoid automaton.

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49.

Ada Lovelace is a primary character in the 2019 Big Finish Doctor Who audio play The Enchantress of Numbers, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Jane Slavin as his current companion, WPC Ann Kelso.

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50.

In 2019, Ada Lovelace is a featured character in the play STEM FEMMES by Philadelphia theater company Applied Mechanics.

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51.

Ada Lovelace College is a further-education college in Tottenham Hale, London, focused on digital skills.

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52.

Ada Lovelace Day is an annual event celebrated on the second Tuesday of October, which began in 2009.

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53.

The Ada Lovelace Initiative was a non-profit organisation dedicated to increasing the involvement of women in the free culture and open source movements.

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54.

Ada Lovelace House is a council-owned building in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, near where Lovelace spent her infancy.

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55.

In March 2022, a statue of Ada Lovelace was installed at the site of the former Egron House in the City of Westminster, London, honoring its scientific history.

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56.

Bicentenary of Ada Lovelace's birth was celebrated with a number of events, including:.

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57.

In December 2016, a letter written by Ada Lovelace was forfeited by Martin Shkreli to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for unpaid taxes owed by Shkreli.

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