Bust Of Ada Lovelace and Asteroid Adalovelace - Beverley, UK
Posted by: Groundspeak Premium Member dtrebilc
N 53° 50.639 W 000° 26.042
30U E 668808 N 5969215
This bust of mathematician Ada Lovelace was mounted on the south wall of St. Mary's Church in 2022.
Waymark Code: WM16YXA
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 11/02/2022
Published By:Groundspeak Regular Member Bernd das Brot Team
Views: 1


"St Mary's Church is an Anglican parish church in Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is designated a Grade I listed building.

St Mary's was established in the first half of the 12th century as a daughter church of Beverley Minster, to serve Beverley's trading community. It is a cruciform church, 197 feet in length, with aisled nave and chancel, south transept with east aisle, north transept with east chapel and crypt below, northeast chapel with adjoining sacristy and priests’ rooms above, and a crossing tower." link

By the year 2000 many stone carvings on the outside of the church walls had become so weathered that they were unrecognisable and that new carvings would be created. It was eventually decided that the south wall would receive 9 new carvings, each of women. This decision was made because as a group women are under-represented in statues.

All the 9 chosen women are founders, pioneers and exceptional influencers in the fields of engineering, science and healthcare.

There is an exhibition inside the church of all the 9 women chosen. Prior to the carvings being undertaken, plaster models were made for the stone masons to work from and these are also on display.

Note: Because it is not possible to get close to the wall with the carvings the co-ordinates are taken from the south entrance of the church on Hengate.

The details of Ada Lovelace inside the church are as follows.
ADA LOVELAVE: MATHEMETICIAN
1815-1852

Lovelace is wearing a flowing lace headdress which feeds into the the Analytical Engine she holds in her hands.

This design not only alludes to Lovelace's name, but also the connection she drew between lace weaving machines and the Engine's potential to weave numbers and algebraic patterns.

The asteroid

"Asteroid 232923 Adalovelace is a main-belt asteroid.

Discovery Circumstances
232923 Adalovelace
Discovered 2005 Jan. 15 by KLENOT at Klet.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of George Gordon Byron, was an English mathematician and writer known mainly for her work on Babbage's analytical engine. Her notes are important in the early history of computers, so she is considered the world's first computer programmer." link

Ada The Person

"Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was born Augusta Ada Byron, the only legitimate child of Annabella Milbanke and the poet Lord Byron. Her mother, Lady Byron, had mathematical training (Byron called her his 'Princess of Parallelograms') and insisted that Ada, who was tutored privately, study mathematics too - an unusual education for a woman.

Ada met Babbage at a party in 1833 when she was seventeen and was entranced when Babbage demonstrated the small working section of the Engine to her. She intermitted her mathematical studies for marriage and motherhood but resumed when domestic duties allowed. In 1843 she published a translation from the French of an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer, Luigi Menabrea, to which Ada added extensive notes of her own. The Notes included the first published description of a stepwise sequence of operations for solving certain mathematical problems and Ada is often referred to as 'the first programmer'. The collaboration with Babbage was close and biographers debate the extent and originality of Ada's contribution.

Perhaps more importantly, the article contained statements by Ada that from a modern perspective are visionary. She speculated that the Engine 'might act upon other things besides number... the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent'. The idea of a machine that could manipulate symbols in accordance with rules and that number could represent entities other than quantity mark the fundamental transition from calculation to computation. Ada was the first to explicitly articulate this notion and in this she appears to have seen further than Babbage. She has been referred to as 'prophet of the computer age'. Certainly she was the first to express the potential for computers outside mathematics. In this the tribute is well-founded." link
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Celestial Body: Asteroid

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