Tuesday 11 October is Ada Lovelace Day, and the University of Edinburgh is hosting a series of events in the Main Library. There’s no APL lecture in the afternoon: come along and help improve Wikipedia.
- AM: Guest talks, activities, building things
- PM: Women in STEM Wikipedia edit-a-thon
Link: Event description and booking
Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration day of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM.
Links: Ada Lovelace Day; Map of events worldwide
To find out more about Ada Lovelace and her impact on computing — including programming — then I recommend watching these.
![]() |
Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing BBC documentary on the life and work of Ada Lovelace. Link: Full video with EASE login |
![]() |
The Scientific Life of Ada Lovelace Public lecture by Prof. Ursula Martin for the Lovelace bicentenary. Links: Lecture; Youtube |
“It may be desirable to explain, that by the word operation, we mean any process which alters the mutual relation of two or more things, be this relation of what kind it may. This is the most general definition, and would include all subjects in the universe.”
Ada Lovelace, 1842, identifying the
scope of application for a programmable computer