Ada Lovelace Day is coming, so get your blog posts ready!  Ada Lovelace is widely regarded as "the world's first computer programmer."   The daughter of poet Lord Byron and a well respected writer of her own, Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage on his Difference Engine.  She took copious notes, including what amounted to the world's first programming algorithm.

Ada Lovelace Day was launched in 2009 by Suw Charman-Anderson, who vowed to blog about a woman in technology who she admired if 1,000 other people pledged to do the same.  The pledge was a resounding success, drawing almost 2,000 pledges.  

The purpose of Ada Lovelace Day is to use blogging to "draw attention to women excelling in technology."  As much as the lack of women in technology is a problem, pretending that there are NO women in technology is equally a problem.  

(Oddly enough, the same thing happens in blogging and in the internet at large.  I can't tell you how many people refer to me as "he," even though my articles are posted with my real name right up there on the byline.  And it's not a gender neutral name like "Toby" or "Robin," either.)

Women in technology begin to feel invisible, what has been called the "unicorn-ization" of women in the high tech world.  There are women in technology, lots of them, and Ada Lovelace Day is all about bringing them to the forefront.

The recent news about Computer Science Barbie is an excellent example of this.  Mattel held a poll, allowing people to vote online for Barbie's new career.  "Computer science" was the overwhelming favorite, and Computer Science Barbie will be released later this year.

Yes, she has a pink laptop.  Yes, she has doofy glasses.  Yes, she is Barbie, and therefore kind of… let's just say "problematic" from a feminist standpoint.  But the important part is that now she exists!  Prior to this, there was no Computer Science Barbie, and the mere fact that one alternate universe Barbie works in computer science is a step in the right direction.

Although we think of the Victorian era as being female-unfriendly - and it certainly was - some women of privilege were encouraged to pursue their education.  Ada Lovelace was a sickly child, and her mother was terrified that she would grow up to be insane like her father.  (Ada's mother had left Byron when Ada was only a month old.)

 In order to combat this possibility, Ada's mother homeschooled her during her periods of convalescence.  She encouraged Ada to learn mathematics in particular, and she was tutored in math by some of the luminaries of the day.  Lovelace showed a real flair for mathematics, and her teachers praised her ability and her potential.  Babbage himself dubbed her "The Enchantress of Numbers."

Lovelace and Babbage began corresponding with each other, both socially and professionally regarding Babbage's Difference Engine.  When Lovelace translated an Italian memoir on Babbage's machine in 1842, she appended a collection of notes - one of which was the world's first computer program.

Sadly, Lovelace died at 36 from a combination of uterine cancer and its "cure," bloodletting.