The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. Estranged from Ada's father, who was infamously "mad, bad, and dangerous to know, " Ada's mathematician mother is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education...

Over 150 years after her death, a widely-used scientific computer program was named "Ada," after Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the eighteenth century's version of a rock star, Lord Byron. Why? Because, after computer pioneers such as Alan Turing began to rediscover her, it slowly became apparent that she had been a key but overlooked figure in the invention of the computer. Essinger makes the case that the computer age could have started...

"A fascinating look at Ada Lovelace, the pioneering computer programmer and the daughter of the poet Lord Byron."--

Traces the influential friendship of William Whewell, Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and Richard Jones, citing their pivotal contributions to a significant array of scientific achievements throughout the mid-nineteenth century.

Traces the life and work of the man whose nineteenth century inventions led to the development of the computer.