Cyberchase

The real-life Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) (voiced by Jane Curtin) is known as one of the founders of scientific computing and is the daughter of the romantic poet Lord Byron. In a time when young women were often discouraged from intellectual pursuits, Ada's mother, Lady Byron, had Ada tutored in math and music. Ada had designed a flying machine by around the age of 12. When Ada was 17, she began a lifelong friendship with inventor Charles Babbage, inventor of a calculating machine called the Analytical Engine. Her work on the device, which can be considered a general-purpose computer, earned her a place in history. Her writings anticipated that computers would be used for practical and scientific purposes and also to generate music and graphics. The U.S. Department of Defense honored Lovelace's achievements by naming a software language, "Ada," after her in 1979.