[clug] Ada Lovelace Day

[Jim Croft]

don't care about the woman bit...  she is a geek legend!

we should offer her honorary lifetime CLUG membership, including free
pizza at every meeting.

jim

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Lana Brindley <lanabrindley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a little late posting this, but anyway, here goes ...
>
> The 24th March (which it still is, in a very few parts of the world ...) was
> last year declared "Ada Lovelace Day". It is described on the official
> website as "an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements
> of women in technology and science".[0]
>
> Countess Ada Lovelace[1] assisted Charles Babbage[2] on the development of
> his "Analytical Engine"[3] in the mid 1800's. The Analytical Engine was more
> or less a forerunner to the pocket calculator, and is considered among the
> very first mechanical computers. While Charles Babbage was the mastermind
> behind the engine itself (the hardware engineer, if you will), Ada Lovelace
> was fascinated by the machine, and developed a programming language for it.
> This has become what is now popularly known as the first programming
> language, and the Countess Lovelace the first computer programmer.
>
> Unfortunately for Babbage, the Analytical Engine was never built in his
> lifetime. This is blamed on a number of things - lack of government support
> (in the form of cold, hard cash) chief amongst them. Unfortunately for the
> Countess Lovelace, her programming language was never tested in her
> lifetime. This was blamed on one main problem - the lack of a computer to
> run it on.
>
> Interestingly, the Analytical Engine was built eventually. It now lives in a
> museum in London, if you feel really keen to go and see it. Perhaps even
> more interesting, though, is the fact that Ada Lovelace's legacy lives on,
> 150 years later, in the form of the high-level computer language called
> Ada[4].
>
> So, with history proving that women can program along with the best of them
> - and do so wearing a corset, hat, and gloves - take a moment to reflect on
> the women that you know who work in the engineering, science, computing, and
> IT industries. And maybe send them an email, or give them a call, and tell
> them they're doing a great job.
>
> Thanks,
> Lana
>
> [0] http://findingada.com/about/
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_lovelace
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
> [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engine
> [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)
>
> --
> Cheers! Lana
>
> I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking
> them.
>  - Jane Austen
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> http://lanabrindley.blogspot.com
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> Please avoid sending me Word, Powerpoint or Windows Media attachments.
>
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html for more
> information.
>
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-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
 - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)