Celebration to mark the 200th birthday of Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace

Heritage guide, David Heathcote, 66, is celebrating the bicentenary of Ada’s birth by giving a talk about her life and times on her birthday in two presentations at St Mary Magdalene Church in Market Square, Hucknall, at 2pm and again at 7pm on Thursday, December 10.

David said: “Though she died painfully and tragically at an early age, Ada Lovelace worked closely with the designer of a mechanical computer in the 19th Century.

“She saw the potential of the machine, and developed its idea further. In fact many people, including the US Navy, regard her as the first computer programmer.

“Sadly, because she was a woman at a time when the role of women was merely to marry and have children, her ideas were ignored.

“If people had paid attention to her insights, we might have had computers 70 years earlier than we did.

“It’s a great privilege to be able to tell her story and the battle that she, as an intelligent, perceptive woman, fought against early Victorian male-dominated society.”