The second Tuesday of October is the day the first ever woman computer program is remembered, it the known as the Ada Lovelace Day –ALD – in honour of Augusta Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and his wife Annabelle.
Ada was born in 1815, as her mother feared that she might inherit her father’s poetic tendencies she put her on a path of science, mathematics and logic. Ada was fascinated by mechanisms’ she embraced the British industrial revolution, poured through the scientific magazines of the time to design steam flying machines.
In 1833 Ada Lovelace was introduced to Charles Babbage she helped him develop a device called the Analytical engine, the predecessor of the modern computer. Lovelace and Babbage worked for quite a few years to refine the engine. In 1842 Ada expanded on an article by an Italian mathematician in whom she elaborated on the use of machines through the manipulations of symbols, though Babbage had sketched programs before, the more elaborate and complete one was published by Lovelace, hence she is often referred to as the first computer programmer.
Ada died of cancer at the age of 36, though the “Sketch of the Analytical engine, with notes from the translator” was published it was still a vision, it was only in 1940 that the Alan Turning took to working on the first modern computer, he was inspired by Ada’s publication.
Augusta Ada Lovelace’s passion and vision for technology makes her a powerful symbol for women in the modern world of technology. She was the first person to foresee a creative potential in the Engine. She explained how it could do more than calculate numbers, she explained it could potentially create music, and art if given the right programming and input, this vision was unmatched by her peers, yet it stayed unrecognized for a century.
Ada Lovelace day is the international celebration of the achievements of women in science technology engineering and maths.(STEM)
The Ada Lovelace day invites us to blog or write about some women who has contributed to science and technology,
I dedicate my blog to all the science teachers, particularly my own Mrs. Indira Rao—who taught me the magic of chemistry, the atoms, connecting to become molecules, the chemical bonds and more. The world of chemicals is amazing, of course I have become a prosaic boring doctor but my wind down time is still either Vedic maths or small science experiment like the chlorophyll starch test. There are many more out there.
Bless you Ada, for the computer I work on, Bless you Madam Curie for the knowledge you handed us, bless you every woman who used her creative thinking to nurture an idea till it blossomed into something amazing.
Please honor a Women you know who has contributed to science, technology, engineering, Mathematics by writing about them in the comment box.
Thank you.
Parwatisingari's Weblog 
Grace Hopper, Heady LaMarr and the 6 female ENIAC programmers. The world would not have the Internet if it wasn’t for women.
Thank you HerStory, I was a bit disappointed that there was huge debate on whether women should change their names, not one of the feminists could take a minute to honor a woman scientist. Thank you for giving me hope.