6 Things You Didn't Know About Tech Pioneer Ada Lovelace

Female pioneering ran in the family. Annabella Milbanke, Ada's mother, was a skilled mathematician herself who wanted anything for her daughter but a creative poetic life like the one Ada's father, the colorful poet Lord George Gordon Byron, led.

And so, Annabella enrolled her daughter in tutoring in advanced mathematics and science from an early age. Ada eventually found a mentor in Augustus De Morgan, a professor of mathematics at the University College in London who's considered one of the pioneers in mathematical logic.

At age 17, Ada was introduced to the concept of Charles Babbage's machines at a dinner hosted by another remarkable woman, Mary Somerville. Ada's interest was thoroughly piqued, but it wasn't until 10 years later that Ada acted on her curiosity about the computers-to-be.

Babbage published his findings in 1841 at a seminar in Turin, Italy. An Italian then wrote a summary of the findings in French, and in 1843, Ada translated that article. By then a wife to the Earl of Lovelace and mother of three, she sent Babbage the translated report with her own notes — three times the length of the original article.

No matter how much her mother tried, Ada couldn't escape the poetical inclinations of her father. She wrote to her mother, "If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me poetical science?"

She saw technology through the lens of humanities and culture, once writing that Babbage's machine "weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves."

Lord Lovelace, Ada's husband, wrote that Ada was " . . . A desperate spirit truly; & with a degree of deep & fathomless prudence, which is strangely at variance with the daring & the enterprise of the character, a union that would give me unlimited sway & success, in all probability." She was at the same time wildly brilliant and complicated, having been known for her eccentricity and fondness for alcohol and gambling.