Ada

At a used bookstore today, I ran across The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron by Joan Baum. Long been enthralled with Ada (1815-1852) known as the first computer programmer. Here's an excerpt from the book:

She had also dared to dream, to imagine what computers might do with their power to repeat and loop and change course in midstream. And she had exercised her imagination when time and place were against her, when women were excluded from the halls of learning and generally dissuaded from pursuing subjects like mathematics, even in the drawing rooms.

Never heard of Ada? Here's a fun, short documentary, narrated by Hannah Fry, that spotlights this remarkable 19th century mathematician.

Now Available: A Rip Through Time #2: In The Clear, Black Fields Of Night

The new Simon Rip novella by Chad Eagleton is out now. And in case you missed them, the first series of stories can be found here.

Book description: In his first adventure, Simon Rip pursued Dr. Robert Berlin from the Ice Age to the end of time to retrieve the most powerful invention the world has ever known, the Baryon Core. Now, with his employer's schemes to control all of time revealed, Rip travels across the centuries assembling a team to stop The Company once and for all. With the assistance of Ada Lovelace, Allegra Byron, John Whiteside Parsons, and a mysterious young boy imprisoned in a medieval monastery, the daring time-cop takes the fight directly to The Company. He'll trace the origins of the conspiracy to the darkest heart of World War II, uncover the mastermind, and discover the secrets of his own past.