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Programmer Buys Original Ada Lovelace Painting On eBay

Posted by kdawson on from the mother-of-us-all dept.

An anonymous reader sends the story of the rediscovery of an original painting of Ada Byron at about age 4, the girl who was to become Countess Lovelace and the world's first computer programmer. A US Army sergeant in Tajikistan caught wind of an eBay auction of a 180-year-old painting of Ada Byron, with provenance; he notified a programmer buddy in Texas, who won the auction.

5 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. suspicious? by ILuvRamen · · Score: 4, Insightful
    well pardon me for being skeptical but after reading:

    It was assumed that the original portrait had been lost forever, until a Canadian antique dealer put the original framed watercolor sketch on eBay
    I think it might still be lost forever if you know what I mean. Usually when someone just kinda "finds" a painting and puts it straight to ebay, IT'S A FAKE!
    --
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    1. Re:suspicious? by cavePrisoner · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Experts soon agreed that the portrait was done in the 1820s when Ada was approximately four-years-old. Perhaps the experts are wrong, but personally I'm of the opinion that if its good enough for the experts its good enough for me.
    2. Re:suspicious? by will_die · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If the item shown in the article is the "provenance" then it does not qualify.
      A real provenance needs to make specific reference to the article and have specific and traceable details about the past owners. This looks to be just a quick history of the painter, if it was the correct painter. There is nothing that directly relates to the painting or who the painting is of.

      As for the subject I presume they would of done a quick search of the subject, the painter, Frank Stone ARA, is fairly famous for his painting and mainly for being the father of Marcus Stone. Marcus was really famous in his time and was a close friend of Charles Dickens. Any search for Ada Byron links right to a history of her. So you have a painter who has some name recognition and a named subject who is easy to research; tie that in with a tech savy, sells on ebay(tech savy may be a strech) but aleast is capable of doing some searching.

      BTW, what was the final selling price for this?

  2. Re:Sorry by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can't give "world's first computer programmer" to Ada Lovelace - I have to give it to Joseph Marie Jacquard

    But Jacquard wasn't programming a computer - he was programming a loom. Not that we're not indebted to him, but a loom is not a computer.

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  3. Re:Sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Neither Heron nor Jaquard had considered conditional jumps and loops. Without those, it's not a computer, it's an automaton. The biggest issue with Ada Lovelace is whether she wrote those programs or whether she merely reported what Babbage had done. Her role was supposed to be to document what Babbage had done - it's only in the appendices of that description that there is any programming - but is it the case that she added these appendices herself - or was it at the direction of Babbage?

    Hence we may never know whether she was the first programmer or merely the first tech author.

    However - as others have pointed out - WRITING software is only a small part of what a programmer does. Someone who merely writes programs but doesn't have to debug them is not yet a true programmer.