According to http://findingada.com, yesterday (March 24th) was “Ada Lovelace Day.” It is billed as an international day of blogging to draw attention to women who excel in technology.
The creators of the holiday had hoped to get 1,000 bloggers to participate, and at the deadline, they had 1,980 people who signed on to spread the word. (Of course, that doesn’t count Tardy bloggers!)
In the early 1800′s, Ada wrote the world’s first computer programs for a general-purpose machine that Charles Babbage invented. (You know, the guy who came up with the idea of a programmable computer.)
Though she is considered the first programmer, she had much greater creative vision. While others (even Charles Babbage) envisioned computing machines as simply having calculating or “number-crunching” abilities, Ada Lovelace wrote that “the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”
Wow.
A brief biography of Ada Lovelace is worth the click, and can be found at http://findingada.com/who-was-ada/ If you prefer a more in-depth bio, Wikipedia has one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace.
