Computer Programming - History of Computer

Programming

Computer Programming
According to many people, the first computer programmer was the English
noblewoman Ada Lovelace. In 1843, she published a sequence of steps to perform
using a computing machine designed by her friend, Charles Babbage. These notes
are considered the first computer program.
In 1840, Charles Babbage gave a lecture about his computing machine in Italy. An
Italian mathematician wrote a transcript of the lecture and published it. Ada
Lovelace translated the article to English, and spent nine months writing additional
notes about it. The notes were three times longer than the article. One section of
the notes included a method to use Charles Babbage's machine to calculate
Bernoulli numbers, a mathematical sequence. As a mathematician, they were a
subject of interest to Ada. This method was an algorithm designed to be carried out
by a machine, which is the simplest description of a computer program.
 The program that Ada Lovelace wrote was for Charles Babbage's
"Analytical Engine", a mechanical general-purpose computer he designed,
but never completed. The design included memory, an arithmetic logic unit
(processor), and control flow for looping. This means it would have had all
of the key elements of a modern computer.

 Ada Lovelace was the child of the English poet George Lord Byron, though
he left the country less than a year after she was born, and never returned.
Her mother, Anne Milbanke, supported Ada's love of mathematics and
science.

 Ada was born in 1815 as "The Honourable Augusta Ada Byron", and
married William, 8th Baron King in 1835. William was made the Earl of
 Lovelace in 1838, making her the Countess of Lovelace. They had three
children.

 The first electronic computers were not built until the 1940s, but the early
work of Ada Lovelace was an important moment in the history of
computers.