Today, the world is in the midst of the transformative and ever-developing Digital Age, otherwise referred to as the “Age of Information.” It has been an unprecedented, remarkable, and explosive era marked by social media and computer-generated imagery (and with it, deep fakes), among other novel, previously unimaginable concepts. The bulky monitors and blocky towers of personal computers and laptops, which were once upon a time considered fashionable, futuristic contraptions, have since been replaced with a sleek and stylish array – both multi-functional and specialized – of aerodynamic, minimalistic devices, ranging from smartphones and tablets to lightweight laptops and full-fledged gaming set-ups packed with powerhouse processors.

While many are familiar with those facts, and a recent movie revived interest in Alan Turing’s achievements with computing during World War II, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were the first to conceive the notion of a programmable and automatic universal computer, which, on top of its ability to calculate any mathematical equation at an unmatched speed, could also be used for a seemingly infinite number of other applications. In other words, they envisioned the precursor to the modern computer.

It was certainly an unusual path for any woman, and she managed to do so before an incredibly premature death. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, died in 1852 at the age of 36, but during her short and tumultuous life, she was one of the first to recognize that computers could do far more than complex calculations. This was all the more surprising given that, during her life, no computers existed, and her ideas were based on an implicit understanding of the theoretical work of Charles Babbage, who himself is today recognized as the “Father of the Computer.” What makes her work truly startling is that she did this more than 100 years before the first computer had even been created.