Thinking Outside the Box

Ada Lovelace’s thinking outside the box is actually the characteristic that she is famous for. In her time, “computers” were only used for calculations in math. She was the first person to think of the idea to expand the “computer” to much more than simple calculations. For example, Ada thought it would be a good idea to expand the computer to be used for music and space science.

Now, this seems odd, considering that she lived in the 19th century and computers weren’t even invented yet. But there was a machine called the Analytical Engine which was created by Charles Babbage.

Babbage was Ada’s mentor while he was creating it and Ada was 17 at the time. The Engine was basically a simplified, mechanical version of the computer. Ada helped Babbage to translate Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s papers on the Analytical Engine. While she did this she also added notes to the papers–the amount written was about three times the amount of what was written on the papers themselves. For these notes, she was considered the first computer programmer.