What book title did 12-year-old Ada plan for her study of flight? Flyology. In 1828, twelve-year-old Ada Byron planned a book called Flyology to record her investigations into human flight.
Ada studied bird anatomy, examined wings, and experimented with materials such as paper, silk, wire, and feathers. Her project was not merely imaginative: she tried to reason about wing proportions, equipment, maps, and the practical problems of carrying a person through the air.
She even envisioned a steam-powered flying machine shaped like a horse, with large wings and a rider. The plan reflected the technological excitement of the early Industrial Revolution, when steam engines were transforming transport and manufacturing.
Flyology was a proposed study rather than a completed published book, so it should not be confused with one of Ada’s later, documented works: her translation and seven explanatory notes on Luigi Menabrea’s article about Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Those 1843 notes contain the work for which she is often called the first computer programmer.