Computer Science => first computer program

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer who wrote the first algorithm intended for a machine, making her the first computer programmer.

Born in 1815 as the daughter of a famous poet, Lord Byron, she never got to know her father as he left Britain forever, the year she was born.

At the age of 12, she designed a steam-powered flying machine, inspired by her studies of birds, to travel and be with her mother when she was ill; this concept predated the first aerial steam carriage patent by 15 years.

Lovelace became interested in Babbage’s machines as early as 1833 when she was introduced to Babbage by a mutual friend, author Mary Somerville. This Analytical Engine is generally considered the first computer. It was designed and partly built by the English inventor Charles Babbage who worked on it until his death in 1871. By most definitions, the Analytical Engine was a real computer as understood today, or would have been, had Babbage not run into implementation problems that ultimately meant Babbage never produced a complete working machine in his lifetime.

In 1842, Ada Lovelace translated an article written by the Italian mathematician and engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea, “Elements of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Machine”. Her detailed and elaborate annotations were excellent, especially her description of how the proposed Analytical Engine could be programmed to compute Bernoulli numbers. That led her to create what we now call a computer program.

The Analytical Engine, she wrote, weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

She died in 1852 at the young age of 36.

The early programming language Ada was named for her, and the second Tuesday in October has become Ada Lovelace Day, on which the contributions of women to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are honored.