Happy Ada Lovelace Day! The 15th October is the day set aside annually to celebrate the achievements of Ada Lovelace, a 19th Century English mathematician who worked with Charles Babbage on The Analytical Engine – an early prototype of modern computers. Ada’s achievements included writing the first piece of software, but history forgot her for many years because, well, she was a woman wasn’t she?

Fortunately, that error has long since been redressed, and Lovelace is now a canonical figure in IT history. Sadly, woman are still massively unrepresented in the industry, though, so we celebrate the day to remind everyone that women have been involved in computing with just as an important role as men since the very birth of the industry.

But who was Ada Lovelace? For that, we’ll hand over to our sister site, GirlGuides, South Africa’s leading tech website for women. The team there are all out at the Wired Women conference in Rosebank, and will be tweeting and blogging all day about the achievements of African women in technical fields.

Go, read, enjoy.