Ada Lovelace Research Paper

Ada Lovelace is often referred to as the world's first computer programmer. Which is a little surprising, since she died roughly one hundred years before the computer as we know it was invented.

She was born Augusta Ada Byron in London on December 10, 1815. Her father Lord Byron, the famous poet, and Lady Byron separated early in Ada's life. Her father died when Ada was only eight years old; she never got to know him.

Lady Byron was adamant that Ada not turn out like her father and focused her education math and science. Even thought it was abnormal of women for the time period, both Ada and her mother were adept at mathematics. This helped introduce them to Charles Babbage.

Lovelace met Charles Babbage in 1833. At that time, Babbage was working on his difference machine, which he created to calculate values of polynomials. He was

It was designed to be programmable using punched cards and loops. It even had a sort of "memory".

Babbage was impressed by Ada and called her an "enchantress of numbers". They continued to correspond over the years. When Lovelace was asked to translate a transcript of one of Babbage's lectures into English, Babbage insisted that she add her own notes about the analytical engine. Her notes were three times longer than the original transcript.

In her notes, she explained the details of the analytical engine and how it worked. She included an algorithm that could be used by the engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Essentially, it was the first program written for a computer.

While this is the reason that Ada Lovelace is famous and regarded as the first computer programmer, she also had a remarkable insight into the future of computers. While most were focused on computers used for calculations, Ada realized that other things, like music or letters or images, could be translated into numbers, which could then be processed by computers.

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