{"id":140986,"date":"2025-09-13T20:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140986\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T20:39:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:39:18","slug":"new-statue-of-computing-pioneer-ada-lovelace-gets-green-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/140986\/","title":{"rendered":"New statue of computing pioneer Ada Lovelace gets green light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Plans to erect a statue of pioneering 19th Century mathematician Ada Lovelace in the town near to where she lived as a child have been approved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Lovelace, the daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron, has been widely described as the world&#8217;s first computer programmer, because of <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-34505896\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 jZoZnB\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">her work with inventor Charles Babbage on his idea for an &#8220;analytical engine&#8221; in the 1800s<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">She was born in 1815 in London, but her childhood home was the now-demolished Kirkby Mallory Hall, some five miles (8km) from Hinckley in Leicestershire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Councillors approved a proposal for a 2.5m (8ft 2in) bronze statue of her at a Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council planning meeting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">It will be placed on a plinth on Lower Bond Street outside the Hinckley campus of the North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The project has been proposed by the Ada Lovelace in Hinckley Community Interest Company.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Project leader Stan Rooney said he was delighted the statue had passed the planning hurdle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;Not only is Ada the most significant person to have lived in our borough, she&#8217;s arguably the most important person, past or present, to have lived in our county,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Mr Rooney said Lovelace, who died aged 36, had a &#8220;prodigious ability to comprehend mathematical theory&#8221; and that it was hoped having the statue outside the college would inspire girls and young women to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The statue is currently being cast in Basingstoke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;With a fair wind, we hope to have the statue erected in the next few months,&#8221; Mr Rooney added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The mould has already been used to cast a statue of Lovelace, commissioned by property developers, for a building in Westminster in London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Mr Rooney said the sculptors who created it, Mary and Etienne Millner, had agreed to allow the mould to be used to replicate the original statue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">He said: &#8220;Without that, the cost of the project would have been at least two or three times higher, so we are very grateful to them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The project has been entirely privately funded, Mr Rooney added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">He said the community interest company had raised \u00a350,000 so far and was hoping to raise a further \u00a350,000 through crowdfunding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Planning officers told the meeting the borough council would take responsibility for the statue once it was in place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Committee member Mark Bools said: &#8220;I&#8217;d like to congratulate campaigners and fundraisers because without them this wouldn&#8217;t have been possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;An incredible amount of work has gone into this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;It&#8217;s an amazing site for it, close to the museum, and students will be inspired every time they walk past it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plans to erect a statue of pioneering 19th Century mathematician Ada Lovelace in the town near to where&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[64,63,257,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-140986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-computing","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}