Today, October 11, marks Ada Lovelace Day, an annual celebration of the achievements and contributions of women studying and working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics ( STEM ).
The day has been celebrated every second Tuesday in October since 2009, but this year will be the final official Ada Lovelace Day.
Explaining why the official day will no longer continue after 2022, founder Suw Charman-Anderson said that Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis had slashed the budget for Ada Lovelace Day.
She said: "People who see the impact of our work may not realise that we are a tiny organisation and that everything we do has been done on a shoestring.
"We’ve had generous and committed sponsors, but the funding landscape has changed, and it’s now impossible to continue as we are."
However, Suw added that she had "no doubt" that independent events to mark the day will continue.
As the last official Ada Lovelace day is celebrated, here's what it is and who Ada Lovelace was.
Who was Ada Lovelace?
Ada Lovelace, also more formally known as Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer who lived during the 1800s and is credited as the first-ever computer programmer.
Despite being unusual subjects for women to study in the 19th century, Ada was tutored in mathematics and science from the age of four.
When she was 17 years old she met inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage, who is often considered the "father of the computer".
Charles would become her mentor and Ada took a keen interest in his theoretical analytical engine.
Ada went on to become the first person to recognise that the potential of computing machines extended beyond calculations.
In 1843 she also published an English translated paper about Babbage’s theoretical analytical engine, originally written by Luigi Menabrea.
However, in her translation, Ada added her own notes about the analytical engine, including how the machine could be programmed with a code to calculate Bernoulli numbers.
Although Babbage's theoretical analytical machine wasn't ever fully built, we now know that if it had been, Ada's method would have worked and is widely recognised as the first computer program to ever be written.
It took nearly a century for Ada's contributions to computing to be recognised. She was so far ahead of her time that her original notes on Babbage's analytical engine received little attention until they were republished in the 1953 book Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines.
What is Ada Lovelace Day?
Ada Lovelace Day is an international celebration created in memory of Ada Lovelace to highlight the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
It was founded in 2009 by technologist Suw Charmon-Anderson in response to online discussions about the lack of women speaking at tech conferences.
As well as celebrating women in STEM, the purpose of Ada Lovelace day is also to encourage more women and girls to pursue careers studies and careers STEM by increasing the profiles of women already in the industry, as well as creating new role models.
