Ada Lovelace and the importance of role models

To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2015, Professor Elaine Chew from QMUL's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science argues about the importance of role models. After all, if computer pioneer Ada Lovelace had strong women role models even in her day, we must ensure women continue to do so today. A century before the first computers, Ada Lovelace wrote a study on the potential of Charles Babbage's yet-to-be-built Analytical Engine. Babbage's Analytical Engine is regarded as the world's first computer and Lovelace the world's first computer programmer. She foresaw how Babbage's design could be a general purpose computer, that it might manipulate not merely numbers but also music, even one day composing complex and scientific pieces. The Analytical Engine, she wrote: "weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves". Almost 200 years on, much of what she proposed is now possible.