Description

The Royal Mint has launched new commemorative £2 coins which honour the innovative contributions of computer science visionary Ada Lovelace and her legacy as a female trailblazer.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 1815–1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation and is often considered the first computer programmer, having had the idea for a computer language long before the first computer was invented.

In 1843, Ada translated an article on Babbage’s machine and added extensive notes, three times longer than the original text. Within these notes, she described a method for using the machine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, making her the first person to write an algorithm intended for implementation on a computer. Her visionary insights into the potential of machines extended far beyond Babbage’s time, predicting that computers could manipulate symbols and not just numbers, paving the way for modern programming.

There was even a programming language named ‘Ada’ in her honour, developed by the US Department of Defense between 1977 and 1983. Meanwhile, Ada Lovelace Day, which celebrates women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), became an annual occurrence in October 2009.