Read the text.
Ada Byron Lovelace
Ada Byron was raised by her mother, Annabella, in England in the early 1800s. In those days, girls seldom studied science or mathematics. However, Annabella, herself a gifted mathematician, thought it important to have serious instruction in math and the sciences. Starting when her daughter was just four years old, Annabella hired tutors to teach her. Among them was Mary Somerville, a famous astronomer and writer. Young Ada Byron was creative and imaginative. She excelled at math and science, and she also enjoyed languages and poetry.
Somerville recognized the young girl's abilities and encouraged her tocontinue her studies. When Ada Byron was seventeen, Somerville introduced her to Charles Babbage, a great mathematician and inventor. It was a fateful meeting. Babbage had invented a calculating machine, which he called the Difference Engine. When he showed Ada how the machine could perform basic calculations, she was fascinated. Babbage was impressed with Byron's knowledge and became determined to help her study more advanced mathematics. He soon introduced her to other respected mathematicians.
In 1835, Byron married William King, and they had three children together.King supported her work in mathematics, and she continued working as her family grew. In 1838, the couple were named Countess and Earl of Lovelace.
During this time, Ada Byron Lovelace maintained her friendship with CharlesBabbage, and they worked together on Babbage's inventions.
Babbage later designed a calculating machine more complex than his first one. He named it the Analytical Engine. While he never built this new machine, Lovelace soon realized that it had the capability to perform tasks beyond mere mathematical calculations. And interestingly, Lovelace's love of languages led to her best-known mathematical contribution. In 1842, she began translating an article that an engineer had written about Babbage's Analytical Engine. The article was written in French, and she translated it into English. But then, in addition to the translation, she added her own notes explaining how the machine might be used in the future.Her notes were longer than the original article. In 1843, these analytical notes, signed only with her initials, were published with the translated article. The notes included a set of instructions for directing the machine to solve certain math problems. As Babbage's machine has been called the earliest computer, these notes by Ada Lovelace are considered the first published computer program.
In the notes, Lovelace predicted that machines like Babbage's Analytical Engine would one day be programmed for tasks beyond mathematical calculations. Although others didn't see the possibilities, she suggested that such machines could generate letters and text and even compose music. She essentially foresaw how music, text, and pictures would be converted into digital code in the computer age. It would be many years, however, before people recognized the significance of Lovelace's contributions. She suffered a series of illnesses and died at age thirty-six, less than ten years after the publication of her notes.
Ada Lovelace's translation and notes were rediscovered in the 1950s, more than one hundred years after their publication. In 1953, B. V. Bowden published a book about computers, in which he reprinted the century-old analysis. This time, many scientists and mathematicians studied her thinking. She had been ahead of her time! For her insights, Ada Lovelace has been called the "prophet of the computer age." In the 1970s, the United States Department of Defense began developing a sophisticated computer programming language to use on government computers. In 1979, the new language was named Ada, in honor of Ada Lovelace. And in 2009, Ada Lovelace Day was established. Every October, this day is celebrated to remember Lovelace and to honor the international accomplishments of women in science and technology.
Based on the text, Ada Lovelace is credited with being the first person to do what?
show how a computer could be used to write an article
design and build a complex calculating machine known as the Analytical Engine
use a computer to translate an article from French to English
write a computer program that directed an early computer to solve math problems