Ada Lovelace, the First Programmer

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), daughter of Lord Byron, was trained rigorously in mathematics from childhood — and became Babbage's closest intellectual collaborator.

In 1843, translating an Italian paper on the Analytical Engine, she added her own notes — three times longer than the original text. Among them: a step-by-step method for the Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers.

That method is widely considered the first published algorithm written specifically for a machine — making Lovelace, by most accounts, the first computer programmer, over a century before there was a computer to run it on.

She also saw further than Babbage himself: the Engine, she wrote, might one day manipulate not just numbers, but music and symbols of any kind. Others called her the Enchantress of Numbers.