The BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (was the British Computer Society) recently launched the Information Pioneers campaign to raise awareness of five “often forgotten” pioneers: Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Sir Clive Sinclair, Hedy Lamarr and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Each has a short film about them, so here’s Ortis Deley from The Gadget Show talking about Ada.

Please do pop along to the website and vote for your favourite. Ada is currently 5th… i.e. last, so she does need some TLC! You can also follow @infopioneers on Twitter.

Film maker Rosemarie Reed is putting together a feature-length film on Ada Byron Lovelace, called Byron and Babbage: A Calculating Story, and needs your help (especially if you’re in the United States.)

The film will be based on Ada’s letters and is, as Rosemarie describes it, “a documentary with some dramatic readings”. One of Rosemarie’s previous films, Out from the shadows: the story of Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, was recently shown at the International Science Film Festival in Paris and is in a similar vein.

PBS National will distribute the film, so it will reach 95% of American households with an expected first night viewership of at least 7,000,000 the first night. It will also probably get an international airing, and Rosemarie is also putting together a web site plus a site in Second Life.

Advisors include Betty Toole, who wrote Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers; Joan Baum, who wrote The Calculating Passion of Ada Byron; Drummond Bone, a Byron scholar from Liverpool University; Doron Swade, a Charles Babbage expert; plus an as yet unconfirmed representative from the US Department of Defense for the Ada Software project.

But Rosemarie needs letters of support from people who have been influenced in some way by Ada and who are willing to help publicise the film, be a part of the interactive website, perhaps show the film, or contribute in any other way.

Rosemarie says, “I need letters from people stating how important a film like Ada is and how they through their networks can help to publicize the film. It would be great if the women have organizations they work or belong to. If they are software developers or computer experts, this would be great. It would be best if they were Americans, as the NSF (National Science Foundation) is American.”

If you’re not American, letters would still be useful of course! The deadline is the end of October.

Please write to:

Rosemarie Reed
On the Road Productions International, Inc.
310 Greenwich Street, 21F
New York, NY 10013

Or email Rosemarie directly.