Ada Lovelace ｜ practice English with Spotlight

Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Liz Wade. And I'm Colin Lauver. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live. Almost every part of human life on Earth today involves computers. Computers manage almost all of our banking, communication, information, healthcare, and government systems. But computer programs are all designed by people who work as computer programmers. So who are the computer programmers who design the programs that manage our lives? Imagine a computer programmer. A person working at a computer, writing a program. Did you imagine a man or a woman? Most people would imagine a man. This is for a good reason. The majority of people designing today's computer programs are men. Many people think that women are not as able as men to have technology jobs. They think men are better than women in subjects like science and maths. But it was not always like that. In fact, a woman wrote the world's very first computer program. Her name was Ada Lovelace, and she wrote her computer program before computers were even invented. Today's spotlight is on Ada Lovelace. Ada Lovelace was born in England in 1815. She was the daughter of Lord and Lady Byron. Lord Byron was a very famous writer. He is especially famous for his poetry about love and emotions. But he lived a wild life. His marriage to Lady Byron was very troubled. It ended one month after their daughter Ada was born. Ada Lovelace never met her father. He died when she was only eight years old. Many women in the 18th and 19th centuries had very few chances in life. But Lady Byron's parents gave her an excellent education. She wanted to give her daughter Ada a good education too. But Lady Byron was also afraid. She did not want Ada to become like her father, Lord Byron. So Lady Byron encouraged Ada to study math and science instead of just poetry and literature. Even as a young girl, Lovelace was extremely good at math. One of her teachers was Mary Somerville. Somerville was a well-known scientist, even though she was a woman. When Lovelace was 18, Somerville introduced her to Charles Babbage. Babbage was a famous inventor and engineer. Lovelace loved his inventions, and Babbage loved her intelligent mind. They became friends for life. When Lovelace was 19, she married William King. King later became the Earl of Lovelace. So Ada became the Countess of Lovelace. This is where her name came from. Her husband encouraged her studies of math and science. Many men at the time would not have done this. Her husband also encouraged her friendship with Babbage. Babbage and Lovelace's friendship led to Lovelace becoming the world's first computer programmer. Babbage received money from the British government to build machines. His machines used theories of numbers to solve problems. One of his machines, called the Analytical Engine, was an early version of today's computers. Lovelace was deeply interested in Babbage's Analytical Engine. She learned everything she could about it. Some people think that she understood the machine even better than Babbage did himself. In 1842, Babbage needed someone to translate a paper on his Analytical Engine. Babbage asked Lovelace to translate the paper. He even asked her to add her own notes and ideas. So Lovelace explained the Analytical Engine. She also included her own ideas. When she was finished, she had made Babbage's paper three times longer. In her notes, Lovelace had written a computer program. It used a math formula called Bernoulli's number. She wrote in a letter to Babbage, I want to put in something about Bernoulli's number. It will be in one of my notes as an example. It will be an example of how the engine can work out a particular answer without human head and hands working it out first. Her example contained a full set of steps that a machine could use to reach the answer to a problem. It was the first ever recorded computer program. Lovelace's notes also show that she saw how important computers could be in the future. Most other scientists did not yet realize this. She believed that computing machines could do more than just solve math problems. She saw that anything could have a mathematical relation, even music. Lovelace saw the possibilities of computers before they were even invented. Sadly, Ada Lovelace died young. She had cancer. She was just 36. She never got a chance to see any of her ideas come to life. However, Lovelace's work continued to be important after her death. 100 years later, a man named Alan Turing discovered Lovelace's notes. Turing was working for the British government during World War II. At that time, the German army was communicating using secret codes. These codes prevented the British army from understanding the messages. Turing was looking for mathematical ways to understand these secret messages. Lovelace's ideas were important to Turing's thinking on computers. And Alan Turing became one of the world's first and most important computer scientists. Ada Lovelace's situation was unusual. She was born in a time when women did not have many chances in life. But Lovelace was wealthy. She had a mother who made sure she had an education. Her husband also encouraged her. This was not common for most women in her time period. Because of her unusual chances, Lovelace proved that women could have amazing minds for maths and science. There have been many women since Lovelace who are successful in math and science. In fact, many of the first computer programmers in the 1950s and 1960s were women. And yet, many people still hold false ideas about women's minds. This is a stereotype of all women. It is a common belief that women do not have the right intelligence for math and science. But not everyone believes these stereotypes. Tai Yu works in a high-level position for the technology company Cisco. She writes in the Huffington Post, I believe bringing more women to computer jobs is extremely important to society. If we do not have enough people with computer skills to manage and protect the computer systems that power our lives, we are in serious trouble. Computers, science and technology are more and more important for people today. Will women be able to have a fair chance to succeed in these fields? Listen for another Spotlight programme on the role of women in the fields of science and technology. This programme was Jen Hawkins. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this programme again and read it on the internet at www.radioenglish.net. This programme is called Ada Lovelace. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight programme. Goodbye.