Augusta Ada King-Byron – world’s first computer programmer
Baku, March 7 (AZERTAC). Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the world's first computer programmer.
Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also developed a vision on the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Ada's mind-set of "poetical science" led her to ask basic questions about the Analytical Engine (as shown in her notes) examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool.
In 1842, Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his Analytical Engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer, and future Prime Minister of Italy, wrote up Babbage's lecture in French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève in October 1842.
Babbage's friend Charles Wheatstone commissioned Ada to translate Menabrea's paper into English. She then augmented the paper with notes, which were added to the translation. Ada spent the better part of a year doing this, assisted with input from Babbage. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL.
In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Ada's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Ada's notes as a description of a computer and software.
An illustration inspired by the A. E. Chalon portrait created for the Ada Initiative, which supports open technology and women
Lovelace's notes were labeled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered the first algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada is often cited as the first computer programmer for this reason.
The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, MIL-STD-1815, was given the number of the year of her birth. Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded a medal in her name[84] and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students of computer science.[85] In the UK, the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, the annual conference for women undergraduates is named after Ada Lovelace.
Now "Ada Lovelace Day" is an annual event celebrated in mid-October whose goal is to "...raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths."
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