Ada Lovelace artwork

My artwork for one of the rooms at Macmillan Publishing, King's Cross, based on the life and work of Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer.

My blurb to accompany it:

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852)

Having seen designs for Charles Babbage’s calculating device the Difference Engine, in 1842 at the age of 27, Ada Lovelace wrote the first ever computer program. She had seen the potential for this and his subsequent machines not only for mathematics and science, but also for creating art.

Although these devices were never fully built in her lifetime, she also envisaged programming them using punch cards similar to those used in weaving looms at the time.

The daughter of poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Millibanke, who was interested in mathematics and science and nicknamed ‘The Princess of Parallelograms’ by Byron, the artwork is designed to also work upside-down with Ada as the Difference Engine, the Art, Maths/Science as her ‘input’ and code as her ‘output’.

Bryon left Ada and her mother when Ada was 1 month old and they never met again. The punchcard code is a poem he wrote for her entitled ‘Childe Harold’.