Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer

Diane Stanley

A lovely children’s book about the world’s first computer programmer and how she came to be who she was:

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World

Rachel Ignotofsky

An illustrated celebration of trailblazing women in science – Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Mae Jemison, and more pioneers who conquered curiosity against tremendous cultural odds:

Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer

Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, on the nature of the imagination and its three core faculties:

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer

Sydney Padua

How Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage invented the world’s first computer – an illustrated adventure in footnotes and genius:

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson

“Ada’s love of both poetry and math primed her to see beauty in a computing machine. She was an exemplar of the era of Romantic science, which was characterized by a lyrical enthusiasm for invention and discovery.

[…]

It was a time not unlike our own. The advances of the Industrial Revolution, including the steam engine, mechanical loom, and telegraph, transformed the nineteenth century in much the same way that the advances of the Digital Revolution — the computer, microchip, and Internet — have transformed our own. At the heart of both eras were innovators who combined imagination and passion with wondrous technology, a mix that produced Ada’s poetical science and what the twentieth-century poet Richard Brautigan would call ‘machines of loving grace.’”

How Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, became the world’s first computer programmer:

Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers

“Everything is naturally related and interconnected.”

Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer, on science and religion: