As promised, here is a blog posting for Ada Lovelace Day, March 24th 2009:
Ada Lovelace Blue Plaque
12 St. James's Square, London, United Kingdom.
You can now zoom around this location using Google Street View
The Blue Plaque is to the right of the lamp post
From the London Cyberpunk Tourist Guide:
Ada, Countess of Lovelace
(1815-1852)
12 St James's Square.The first "computer programmer" of Charles Babbage's Difference and Analytical Engines.
See this BBC article and this University of Warwick article
GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:28 ( 51.507743 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:08:11 ( -0.136415 )The brown brick building on the corner, at 10 St.James Square, is the Royal Institute of International Affairs a famous diplomacy, security and intelligence think tank, known as Chatham House, famous for the Chatham House Rule:
"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."
Ada, Countess of Lovelace, was fictionalised as one of the main characters in The Difference Engine, an alternative history steampunk novel written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
Hopefully these famous authors might also contribute a blog posting on the topic of admirable women in technology.