Link of the Week - A day for Ada

Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, translated a “Sketch of the Analytical Engine,″ and added her own extensive commentaries to the first written outline of a computer, making her what some term The First Hacker. Image courtesy of The Analytical Engine by John Walker

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day, March 24, a total of 1,980 people pledged to blog about a woman in technology that they admire.

Ada Lovelace, born in 1815 to Lord Byron and his wife, translated Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s Analytical Engine, appending notes that included a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the machine — the first computer program. (Unfortunately, the calculations were never carried out, as the machine was never built.) She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

The Ada programming language is named after her.

See the Ada Lovelace Day Collection of postings. From Barbara Liskov (featured in iSGTW 25 March 2009) to Hedy Lamarr, who developed the idea of communication using a frequency-hopped spread spectrum while in Hollywood making feature films, there's a female role model for everyone!