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[[Image:Ada 1838.jpg|right|thumb|200px]]

[[Image:Ada 1838.jpg|right|thumb|200px]]

'''Augusta Ada Byron''' (1815-1852) is best known for having studied [[Charles Babbage]]'s plans for the [[Analytic Engine]] and with Babbage and others wrote out some computational algorithms intended to run on it.  

'''Ada Lovelace''' (1815-1852) was a British mathematician who's claim to fame is that many credit her with being "the first computer programmer"<ref name="sciam">[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Ada_and_the_First_Computer.pdf Scientific American, May 1999, pp76]</ref>.  The issue is not clear-cut, because there are different opinions regarding what constitutes a "program" and what constitutes a "computer".  These issues will be discussed below.  Perhaps the main objection is that the computer for which her program was written was never built.

Although modern feminists have presented her as "the first computer programmer"<ref name="sciam">[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Ada_and_the_First_Computer.pdf Scientific American, May 1999, pp76]</ref>, there are diverse opinions on this. For one thing, the computer Babbage conceived had never been built.   

The claim of "first programmer" arises from the fact that she was first to publish a paper (in 1843) containing a mathematical algorithm ''encoded for the purpose of being executed by an automatically controlled digital computer''.  That computer was the "analytical engine" designed by [[Charles Babbage]]. It was never built, because Babbage's design was way ahead of its time.  The program calculated [[Bernoulli numbers]].

Ada had to write the algorithm on paper, rather than at a keypunch or computer terminal, of course.  But, to use modern terminology, she actually "wrote code".  Also, since the term "program" had not been coined, she described her algorithm as a "plan".  In the 20th century, the program was carefully analyzed and simulated, and found to have a minor "bug".

 

 

 

 

Ada had to write the algorithm on paper, rather than at a keypunch or computer terminal, of course.  But she actually, to use modern terminology, "wrote code".  Also, since the term "program" had not been coined, she described her algorithm as a "plan".  In the 20th century, the program was carefully analyzed and simulated, and found to have a minor "bug".  In 1983, a team of researchers at United States Department of Defense designed a computer language named '''Ada'''.  It is not widely used.

==Early Life==

==Early Life==

==Was Ada really first?  Was the Bernoulli program the first program?==

==Was Ada really first?  Was the Bernoulli program the first program?==

There are those who claim <ref>[http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/ada.html]</ref> that Babbage himself, or an assistant of his, or perhaps some of his sons, must have written "programs" before Ada did.  Issues like this arise from time to time, perhaps most notably in the "calculus war" between Newton and Leibniz, or the "non-Euclidean geometry war" among Gauss, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky.  The scientific community generally gives great weight to the act of publishing one's work.  If these other people wrote programs before Ada did, they don't seem to have published them, and they are lost.  It is not known what problems these earlier programs might have been solving.

There are those who claim <ref>[http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/babbage/ada.html]</ref> that Babbage himself, or an assistant of his, or perhaps some of his sons, must have written "programs" before Ada did.  Issues like this arise from time to time, perhaps most notably in the "calculus war" between Newton and Leibniz, or the "non-Euclidean geometry war" among Gauss, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky.  The scientific community generally gives great weight to the act of publishing one's work.  If these other people wrote programs before Ada did, they don't seem to have published them, and they are lost.  It is not known what problems these earlier programs might have been solving.

==References==

==References==