Ada Lovelace

right|thumb|200px Ada Lovelace is widely credited as "the first computer programmer", though there are diverse opinions on this, since the computer had not yet been invented. The claim 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 automatic 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 she actually, to use modern terminology, "wrote code". In the 20th century, the program was carefully analyzed and simulated, and found to have minor "bug". (Babbage undoubtedly also wrote some "code" as examples for the analytical engine, but it wasn't published.)

In 1983, a team of researchers at United States Department of Defense designed a computer named Ada. It is not widely used.

Early Life

Although she was the only legitimate child of of the famous British poet Lord Byron, she had virtually no relationship with him, given his death when she was only nine years old.