Dreaming in Code: Ada Byron Lovelace, Computer Pioneer

Product Description

This illuminating biography reveals how the daughter of Lord Byron, Britain’s most infamous Romantic poet, became the world’s first computer programmer.

Even by 1800s standards, Ada Byron Lovelace had an unusual upbringing. Her strict mother worked hard at cultivating her own role as the long-suffering ex-wife of bad-boy poet Lord Byron while raising Ada in isolation. Tutored by the brightest minds, Ada developed a hunger for mental puzzles, mathematical conundrums, and scientific discovery that kept pace with the breathtaking advances of the industrial and social revolutions taking place in Europe. At seventeen, Ada met eccentric inventor Charles Babbage, a kindred spirit. Their ensuing collaborations resulted in ideas and concepts that presaged computer programming by almost two hundred years, and Ada Lovelace is now recognized as a pioneer and prophet of the information age. Award-winning author Emily Arnold McCully opens the window on a peculiar and singular intellect, shaped — and hampered — by history, social norms, and family dysfunction. The result is a portrait that is at once remarkable and fascinating, tragic and triumphant.

From School Library Journal

Gr 5–8—Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), daughter of poet Lord Bryon, was raised in privilege by her mother, married into an aristocratic, titled family, and received an outstanding education for a woman in the 19th-century. Always inquisitive and showing qualities of genius, Ada had the best tutors in mathematics and science. She met many important men of science, including inventor Charles Babbage. They worked together and produced concepts that presage computer programming. These concepts, as well as Babbage’s design of an analytical engine, were forerunners of today’s computers. Ada’s restless spirit, addiction to gambling, use of narcotics, and poor health plagued her in the last years of her life. She was never able to overcome the prejudice against women in science. For example, she wasn’t allowed to enter the building of the Royal Society nor borrow books from its library. This book is divided into five parts that chronicle Ada’s life. In addition to the strong supporting back matter, the use of citations is an outstanding feature of this volume. VERDICT An exceptional biography and an important addition for all STEM collections.—Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community College, Mt. Carmel

Review

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of poet Lord Bryon, was raised in privilege by her mother, married into an aristocratic, titled family, and received an outstanding education for a woman in the 19th-century…This book is divided into five parts that chronicle Ada’s life. In addition to the strong supporting back matter, the use of citations is an outstanding feature of this volume. An exceptional biography and an important addition for all STEM collections.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

Dreaming in Code is written with grace and intelligence, researched with care and peppered with historic photos and remarkable illustrations of 19th-century technology. It’s sure to inspire a new generation of pioneers unwilling to let obstacles distract them from leading the way into the future.
—Shelf Awareness for Readers (starred review)

Here McCully offers middle-schoolers a biography at once more nuanced about Lovelace’s enduring contribution to computer development and vastly more involving about the domestic dramas that marked her life with her controlling mother, her supportive but ultimately unloved husband, and her largely ignored children…The eminently readable text moves swiftly, and portrait reproductions included throughout underscore the polished society in which nineteenth-century sciences flourished.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)

A biography of Ada Lovelace, widely celebrated as the first computer programmer…McCully demonstrates that although Ada had the potential to achieve