Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Editor: David Peach Rayan
【New Zhiyuan Guide】Goddess Day is coming! Did you know that the first programmer in history was actually a woman? She was a 19th-century odd woman, the daughter of the Romantic poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.
Do you know who the world's first female programmer was?
She was the daughter of the Roman poet Lord Byron, an accomplished Mathematician of 19th-century England, and later a countess.
Named Ada Lovelace, a goddess-level being.
It is now widely believed that Ada was the founder of a computer program and the first programmer in history.
In today's parlance, she is the first "program girl" in history, a hard-core "science and engineering woman" who is a technical pressure science and engineering man, and a school bully.
Original Family: Tiger Mom Education
Edda Lovelace was the only married daughter of the English Romantic literary magnate and poet Byron, and her mother, Annabella Milbanke, came from an aristocratic family.
4-year-old Ada
Ida's childhood is hard to say happy. His father was mercurial and patriarchal, and he was disappointed when Mrs. Byron gave birth to a girl.
On January 16, 1816, Annabella took Ida, who had just reached the full moon, and was thrown out of the house by Byron and returned to Kirby Mallory's mother's house.
Four months later, Byron reluctantly signed a separation agreement and left England.
When Ida was 8 years old, Byron died of illness during the Greek War of Independence.
7-year-old Ada
At this point, Ada's closest relatives are only her mother. Before her 20th birthday, her mother never showed her a portrait of Byron.
Byron once wrote in the poem, "My dear daughter, do you look like a mother?" Edda, the only daughter in my heart under my roof."
You know, Ada's successful life is indispensable to an excellent mother, as well as "tiger mother" education.
Her mother, Annabella, received a good education from an early age, studying mathematics and astronomy under the famous thinker William Flemund.
Byron once praised his wife as the "Princess of the Parallelogram", and the character of Donna Inez in his masterpiece Don Juan was based on Annabella.
In her later years, Annabella was an avid educator of great prestige at the time.
Great mothers are not less demanding of their children.
Because Annabella herself loved mathematics, she insisted that her daughter learn logic, science and mathematics from an early age. These disciplines were almost forbidden for women in the 19th century, and women who were interested in and willing to delve into these disciplines were extremely rare.
In addition, Mrs. Byron's educational plan for her daughter is also well organized. Little Ida's rich and varied curriculum has led her to show a keen interest in many phenomena in nature during her studies.
The girl who wanted to fly was paralyzed
From a young age, the young girl showed an astonishing talent and curiosity for science and engineering knowledge.
In February 1828, in order to realize her dream of flying, she decided to build a pair of wings herself at the age of 13.
She methodically, thoughtfully, imaginatively and passionately studied different materials and sizes. She considered the various materials used to make the wings: paper, oil paper, wire and feathers. She studied the anatomy of birds to determine the correct proportions between the wings and the body.
17-year-old Ida Byron
She even decided to write a book of Flying Science, illustrating some of her discoveries and what equipment was needed: for example, using a compass to "take the most direct path" over mountains, rivers and valleys. The final step in her plan is to combine steam with the "art of flight".
She wanted to fly, her thoughts were crazy, but she broke her wings by reality.
Ida grew up weak and often sick. At the age of eight, she suffered from headaches that affected her vision.
In June 1829, Ida was paralyzed by a measles attack and recuperated in bed for nearly a year, after which she remained immobile. It wasn't until 1831 that she was able to walk on crutches.
Although Ada ultimately failed to fulfill her aspirations to become a pilot, her interest in science and engineering went far beyond that.
In 1835, at the age of 20, Ida married an aristocratic young man named William King. He had taught her math once. After her husband was crowned Count of Lovelace, Lady Ida King became Countess of Lovelace.
Because of Ida's identity and educational background, she was able to meet some of the most famous scientists and celebrities in society at that time.
Such as mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage, mathematician Sir David Brewster, inventor Charles Wheatstone, physicist Michel Faraday, writer Charles Dickens and so on.
They admired the clever girl and were willing to teach them everything they knew, and Ada Lovelace earned her the title of "Queen of Mathematics".
Among them, her acquaintance and cooperation with Charles Babbage has become the most talked about by later people.
Digital witch, the first female programmer in history
In 1833, Ida's tutor and close friend Somerville introduced her to the mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, and the two became close friends, and began a long-term working relationship.
This big guy is a protagonist who opened the way for Ida's female programmers.
As an adult, Ida's interests were extremely broad, including disciplines related to how the brain thinks, such as phrenology and hypnosis. She was interested in the brain because she suspected her mother had a subconscious madness. But these studies were not successful.
After meeting Babbage, Ida quickly became fascinated by the analytical machine project babbage was working on. Between 1842 and 1843 she translated an article by the Italian military engineer Federico Luigi on the analytical machine, with detailed notes.
The note contains a huge chart full of mathematical algorithms, considered the "first computer program."
Ida describes how to create code for Babbage's parser to process letters, symbols, and numbers, creating the concept of loops and subroutines.
Ada's notebook is one of the most important documents in the early history of computers, and it shows a vision that transcends the times.
While Babbage and other prominent scholars of her generation still focused only on the mathematical power of computers, she had foreseen a future in which computers could be widely used, such as composition, cartography, and scientific exploration.
Babbage admired Ida's intelligence and analytical abilities, and did not hesitate to praise her, calling her "Enchantress of Numbers". In 1843, Babbage wrote to Ida:
"Forget the many troubles of the world, forget the hypocritical liars - forget everything, as long as there is a "witch of numbers" is enough." 」
Future generations will miss it infinitely
On November 27, 1852, at the age of 36, Ida died of excessive blood loss in order to treat cervical cancer.
According to her last wishes, Ida was buried next to her father after her death.
In 1953, a hundred years after Ada's death, her "Introduction to the Analytical Machine" research notes were republished.
On the eve of computer science and technology changing the world, people reacquainted themselves with the world's first computer programmer.
On December 10, 1980, the U.S. Department of Defense produced a new computer programming language, Ada. Ada is an extension of Pascal and other languages, and is closer to natural language and mathematical expressions.
In honor of her achievements, the British Computer Society presents awards in the name of Ida every year.
Nvidia pays tribute to Ida
Similarly, in 2020, NVIDIA released the Ada Lovelace graphics card for the 5nm production process.
Originally, Nvidia planned to launch Hopper after the previous generation of Ampere architecture, but it put Ada Lovelace in line.
Nvidia said Ada was the daughter of the English poet Byron and a brilliant mathematician. She is also the founder of computer programs, creating concepts such as loops and subroutines. In 1843, she published the world's first algorithm.
Nvidia named the product Ada in honor of this woman who excelled in the professional field, not to mention men.
Nvidia's new graphics card also has a significant improvement in performance, which is groundbreaking. This is also one reason for using Ada as a name.
The Ada architecture, numbered AD102 at its core, has up to 12 GPCs (Graphics Processing Clusters) and 72 TPCs (Texture Processing Clusters), as well as 144 SM (Streaming Multiprocessors).
Each SM has 128 stream processors. There are nearly 18,432 stream processors in the entire GPU, an increase of more than 70% compared to 10,752 of the previous generation ampere architecture.
It is expected that Ada's new GPU architecture will bring leapfrog performance improvements, of course, can not buy, that is another problem, according to the situation in recent years, to bring the "Ada Goddess" home, in addition to time, I am afraid I need to prepare a few more wallets.
Resources:
https://mbd.baidu.com/ug_share/mbox/4a81af9963/share?tk=aa32cbe29bbfebb854acb240c53e4450&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwjrsbu.smartapps.cn%2Fzhihu%2Farticle%3F_swebfr%3D1%26id%3D359933116%26isShared%3D1%26_swebFromHost%3Dbaiduboxapp
https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/science-54524059
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E6%84%9B%E9%81%94%C2%B7%E5%8B%92%E8%8A%99%E8%95%BE%E7%B5%B2
https://cloud.tencent.com/developer/article/1596303