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Ada Lovelace She Wrote Code 100 Years Before Computers
She wrote a computer program a hundred years before the first computer existed.
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, the most famous poet in the world. Her mother was determined that she would never become like him, so she raised Ada on mathematics. At 17, Ada met the inventor Charles Babbage and understood his machines when most people only stared. In 1843 she translated an article about his Analytical Engine and added her own notes, three times longer than the article itself. In the last one, Note G, she wrote out step by step how the engine could calculate the Bernoulli numbers: what many call the first computer program ever published.
She also saw further than Babbage himself: a machine that might one day compose music. The engine was never built. Ada died in 1852, at 36, the same age as her father, and was buried next to him. A century later Alan Turing wrote about her, and today a programming language carries her name.
The facts behind this file
Legends, disputes & careful wording
- Her notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine are often called the first computer program. Historians still debate how much of the work was hers and how much was Babbage's, and the episode says so.
Main sources
- Ada Lovelace's 'Notes' on the Analytical Engine (1843)
Spotted a mistake or know a better source? Tell us.
Further reading
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Image & film credits
- Difference Engine fragment: Eric and Mary Ellen (mellen_petrich), CC BY-SA 2.0 · Punched cards for the Analytical Engine: Karoly Lorentey, CC BY 2.0 · Jacquard loom, National Museum of Scotland: Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0 · St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall: Phil Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Other archival images are public domain or CC0 (Analytical Engine trial model: Daderot, CC0); video clips from Pexels.
- Music and sound made for this video.
