As Lovelace and Babbage are some of my favorite historical figures if you must "devil's advocate" the question (can't imagine why) an abacus is a computer, as it holds data, or between the two inventors there is a failed upholstery maker named...Jacquard.
Non-digital player pianos, upholstery, and yes what many narrowly think of as "real computers" come from punch cards that for the loom essentially "say" up-down-down-down-up-up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_…
The key to being a fixed loom operating on this pattern is that the card could be replaced for a different pattern, olds like me call this "software" on ancient to you "discs"
Jacquard didn't know math or indeed have let's pick a quote at random about Lovelace 
That is from Charles Babbage, a considerable genius in his own right and possibly the most enormously cranky human being to ever live in England.
From here Lovelace's abilities totally outstrip mine to describe. If you say it's a stretch, you do not at all know the field.
And yes she was a daughter to the mad, bad, and dangerous to know Lord Byron but she only lived with his ghost: her mother pushed her into science as a way to get away from the dark forces of art that plagued her crappy husband
Some genetics might have lingered after all: syphilis can be passed through the blood, as can manic-depression. It's difficult and probably ridiculous to patholize from afar but both Byron and Lovelace's talent and drive are its own mystery.
At any rate she died at 36. If the metals had been right for the Analytic Engine, had she had more patrons like Babbage, and most of all if she had lived even ten years more she might be the most famous scientist of her age. She's well known though and her legacy even more so.
Nobody's done an Ada Lovelace miniseries (though Bletchley Circle does a good job with her legacy in women "computers" in WWII) and even if they do that silence is noticed. For a little while I wanted to write a play about this, but a thread will do. It did for Jacquard.
unroll me thank you
