Lovelace at 200: Celebrating the High Priestess to Babbage's machines

The ordinary heroine turned cultural and computing icon

A few of computing's most vivid characters have become cultural icons. Most are from the last few decades, such as Steve Jobs and Alan Turing, but last month the University of Oxford held an academic symposium to mark the 200th birthday of one of the first: Ada, Countess of Lovelace, born on 10 December, 1815."