How Ada Lovelace wrote the world's first software code
IT did not start with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, or even with Alan Turing. The first programmer in history was Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the famous Lord Byron and a regular at the salons of the early 19th century. Here's how Lovelace invented modern programming and why her influence is still felt in the field today.
Portrait of a programmer in her youth
Ada Lovelace was born on December 10, 1815 as Augusta Ada Byron. If you recognized this surname from school literature lessons, you were not mistaken – she was the only legitimate child of the famous romantic poet Lord Byron, who inspired Pushkin and Lermontov.
Byron himself did not participate in raising his daughter – his extravagant life was spent traveling around the world away from his child. Moreover, he divorced Ada's mother, Anna Isabella Milbank, when the girl was two months old. However, paradoxically, it was her father who became the main reason that young Ada began to study mathematics and logic – a rarity for women of that time.
This is because her mother tried to protect her from the poet’s romantic inclinations and was actively involved in her daughter’s education. Ada was actively interested in science. Already at the age of 12, she dreamed of flying and meticulously developed a project for mechanical wings and navigation devices. And by the age of 17, she was studying mathematics and engineering at a level well above her age.
Her interests brought her into the world, where she met famous scientists of the time: Michael Faraday, the inventor of the stereoscope Charles Wheatstone, physicist David Brewster and one of the last “gentlemen of science” Andrew Cross.
The first programmer meets the inventor of the first computer
At the same time, Ada corresponded with Mary Somerville, an expert in mathematics and astronomy, who paved the way for women in science. Thanks to Somerville's extensive contacts in scientific circles, Ada's fateful acquaintance with Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, took place. And they quickly became close friends and like-minded people.
Most people consider computers and programming to be 20th century phenomena. However, the first computing devices were developed many centuries before Ada Lovelace wrote the first code. The oldest of them is the Antikythera mechanism, which was created, according to various estimates, from 200 to 105 BC.
And the first programmable machine was described in 1206 by the famous mechanic Ismail Al-Jazari.
By the 19th century, mechanical computing had reached a new level. They could perform complex calculations (including extracting square roots) and various applied tasks, such as playing music and embroidering patterns.
It was Charles Babbage who was one of the most prominent developers of computers of the time. In 1812, he came up with the idea of a device for automatic calculations of logarithmic tables. The scientist realized that an automated machine could replace a whole group of mathematicians and make calculations more reliably and faster.
Babbage received more than 17 thousand pounds (almost 2 million in today's money) of government funding, but for 10 years he was never able to implement this project.
Subsequently, this circumstance turned out to be extremely successful for the world of science. Babbage switched to developing another project – the world's first analytical engine and the first prototype of a modern computer in history.
The Analytical Engine captures the imagination of the scientific world
Babbage intended his invention to be a more universal computing tool than all previous developments of the time. The architecture of the Analytical Engine was very similar to modern computers. It was supposed to consist of four elements: a warehouse, a factory, a control element and an information input/output device. The warehouse was intended to store the values of variables and the results of operations – an analogue of memory in modern computers. The factory played the role of a processor, and the input/output device read the sequence of operations and variables from punched cards – floppy disks of the 19th century.
The project was not realized during Babbage's lifetime. The royal grant was not approved for him, so the scientist financed all the work himself. He conducted a number of successful experiments, but quickly realized that the technology of that period was unable to provide the necessary power.
However, the idea of the first computer and the theoretical description of its operation were enough to create a sensation in scientific circles. Babbage gave lectures throughout Europe, and outstanding mathematicians discussed the capabilities of the Analytical Engine.
From the first computer to the first code
Ada Lovelace was one of the most active participants in these discussions. Despite the fact that the Analytical Engine did not physically exist, Lovelace was the main expert on it. Babbage even called her the “enchantress of numbers” because of her keen mathematical mind, which seemed created to work with his invention. No one, not even the creator himself, understood the device as well as she did. Therefore, Lovelace took upon herself the work of popularizing it.
In the early 1840s, she was studying notes for a course of lectures that Babbage gave at a mathematical conference in Turin. Under the pretext of translating notes from French into English, Lovelace published a large-scale work, which was several times larger in volume than the content of the lectures themselves. It was in these works that the first program code in history was written in 1843.
In her comments to Babbage's lectures, she gave detailed instructions on how to work with the Analytical Engine, rethought its functionality, and along the way invented modern programming.
Lovelace thought carefully about which Analytical Engine operations could be grouped together and repeated—thus developing a cycle. She realized how important it was to keep track of the status of changing variables and came up with a record to reflect those changes.
Most important among Ada's comments was the famous “Note G,” a detailed description of the step-by-step process by which the Analytical Engine could calculate Bernoulli numbers.
Lovelace's program was subsequently translated into modern languages and several calculation errors were discovered in it. It is quite natural that the first programmer was also the creator of the first bug in history.
Glory to the first programmer
Unfortunately, Ada Lovelace's life was short-lived: in 1852, she died at the age of 36 from a serious illness. However, her legacy still lives on and will live on for many centuries to come.
This woman turned the expectations of her era upside down and not only mastered mathematics, but also eclipsed the intellect of even the inventor of the Analytical Engine.
Ada was not only an intellectual, but also a bold dreamer. In her notes, she imagined how analytical machines would process any structural information, including music and art, essentially predicting the era of modern computers.
During her lifetime, Ada Lovelace’s genius was not appreciated, but today every IT specialist knows her name. The Ada programming language is named after her, which is considered one of the most bug-resistant and is therefore used in aviation, space and defense projects.
In her short life, Lovelace laid the foundation for the modern digital world and secured her place in history as the first computer programmer. She was not deterred by 19th century prejudice or health problems, and remains an icon for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics around the world to this day.
Every second Tuesday in October, the world celebrates Ada Lovelace Day. This celebration highlights the achievements of women in STEM fields and inspires girls to pursue careers in these fields.
