Opening paragraphs..........................

     In May 1833, when she was seventeen, Ada Byron was among the young women presented at the British royal court.  Family members had worried about how she would acquit herself, given her high-strung and independent nature, but she ended up behaving, her mother reported, "tolerably well."  Among those Ada met that evening were the Duke of Wellington, whose straightforward manner she admired, and the seventy-nine-year-old French ambassador Talleyrand, who struck her as "an old monkey."

-Walter Isaacson,  The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

-the curious amongst you, wondering how Ada Byron fits in with the "digital revolution," may want to go here.