Women in Science: Ada Lovelace, the First Computer Programmer
Computers streamline everything we do, from making our grocery list to checking the weather. With the Apple iOS Store adding ~20,000 apps per month, more and more of us are trying our hand at computer programming. But who was the first computer programmer?
These days, we back up every email we send without even thinking about it, and we look to our computers to tell us the weather rather than looking outside. Today’s teenagers will never know a world without Twitter. At the age of two, my toddler already knows how to start up her favorite videos on my smart phone (the ones of herself, naturally).
With the Apple iOS Store adding ~20,000 apps per month, coders all over the world are turning computational problems into executable computer programs ranging from the simple to the extremely complex. But who was the first to do so?
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The First Computer Programmer
Lady Ada Lovelace, born in 1815, is considered by many to be the first computer programmer. Her mother Annabella Milbanke fostered an interest in logic problems and mathematics with Ada from a young age—supposedly to combat the influence of what she saw as the volatile and erratic temperament of Ada’s father, the poet Lord Byron. Lord Byron is said to have been disappointed that Ada was not a son and left both her and her mother only months after Ada was born.
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