"The Analytical Engine... can do whatever we know how to order it to perform"
Ada Lovelace
Ada Byron (1815-1852) was the daughter of the English poet Lord Byron. Under her mother's guidance, Ada was tutored from an early age in mathematics and science; she later married the Earl of Lovelace.
In 1835 Ada was introduced to Charles Babbage and learned of his ideas for his "analytical engine." In 1842, Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin in Italy. Interest in his work spread when an Italian engineer, Federico Luigi Menabrea, published an account of the lecture in a leading French scientific journal. Babbage asked Lovelace to translate Menabrea's work; the notes and comments she made were considerably more extensive than the original paper and were published in their own right. In the last of her seven notes, Lovelace describes an algorithm that would enable the analytical engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. Given that this was designed specifically for use with a computing machine, it could be argued that she had created the first-ever computer program. But, the machine was never built, so the algorithm was never put to the test.
Not all historians credit Lovelace so highly. Some claim that she merely documented Babbage's work or, at best, that the algorithm was a collaboration. That said, Babbage believed that she had greater understanding than anyone of the potential for his work.
