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Women of History

• Melisende of Jerusalem

• Joan of Arc

• Isabella of Spain

• Elizabeth I

• Grace O'Malley

• Hannah Emerson Dustin

• Catherine the Great

• Ada Byron Lovelace

• Victoria Woodhull

• Emmeline Pankhurst

• Countess Markievicz

• Jane Digby 

• Indira Ghandi

• Sirimavo Bandaranaike

• Fanny Pearson

• Lilian Ngoyi

ADA BYRON LOVELACE   Born 1815

How do you keep your daughter from taking after her famously dissipated dad? Anne Milbanke, ex-wife of Lord Byron,  immersed her daughter -- Lord Byron's only legitimate child -- in math and musical studies to rid her of latent poetic tendencies. By her teens, Ada was corresponding with Cambridge Professor Charles Babbage, who had created a calculating machine he called the "difference engine." Her notes about his second, never-built device -- the analytical engine -- included detailed digital instructions for its use. Historians consider this the first computer program. To pay tribute to its author, the U.S. Department of Defense gave its universal software language the name Ada. Read more on Ada at this site.