AUGUSTA ADA, COUNTESS OF LOVELACE

Augusta Ada was the only child from the marriage of the poet Lord Byron, Annabella Millbank, who separated when Ada was 1 month old, because of Lord Byron's scandalous affair with his half sister.The lord byron had quite reputation being described by one of his lovers as "mad,bed and dangerous to know".Lady byron was noted for her intellect and had a passion mathematics;she was called by lord byron"the princess of parallelograms".Augusta was raised by her mother, who encouraged her intellectual talents specially in music and mathematics,to counter hot Lady Byron considered dangerous poetic tendencies.At this time,Women were not a allowed to attend universities and could not join learned societies.Never the less,Augusta Pursued her mathematical studies independently and with mathematician, including William Frend.She was also encouraged by another female mathematician,Mary Somerville,and in 1834 at a dinner party hosted by Mary Somerville,she learned about Charles Babbage's ideas for a calculating machine, called the Analytic engine.In 1838 Augusta Ada Married Lord King, later elevated to earl of Lovelace.Together they had three children.

Augusta Ada continue her mathematical studies after her marriage.Charles Babbage had continue on his Analytic engine and lectured on this in Europe.1842 Babbage asked Augusta Ada to translate an article in French describing invention.When Babbage saw hes translation,he suggested she add her won notes, and the resulting work was three times the length of the original.The most complete accounts of the Analytic Machine are found in Augusta Ada's notes.In her notes, She compared the working of the Analytic engine to that of the Jacquard loom,with Babbage punch cards analogs to the cards used to create patterns on the loom .Further more she recognized promises of the machine as a general purpose computer much better then Babbage did.She stated that the "engine is the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree generality and complexity".Her notes on the Analytic Engine anticipate 'many future developments, including computer generated music.Augusta Ada published her writing under her initials A.A.L. concealing her identity as a women as did many women did at a time when women were not consider to be the intellectual equals of men.After 1845 she and Babbage worked toward the development of a system to predicate horse races.Unfortunately, their system did not work well,leaving Augusta heavily in debt at the time of her death at an unfortunately young age from uterine cancer.