image id: ps_cps_cd3_047
Unknown artist
[Ada Byron]
Watercolor, ca. 1835
NYPL, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
Ada Byron inherited poetic imagination as well as good looks from her father,
Lord Byron, but employed it in mathematics. The mathematician and scientist
Mary Somerville was a friend and advisor; through Somerville, Ada met her future
husband and also, probably, Charles Babbage, whose mathematical machines, the
Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, were precursors of the computer.
This research became the great passion of her life, and she developed an early
programming language. Much later, the United States Department of Defense named
one of its computer languages ADA in her honor.
