The First Programmer

Augusta Ada, daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and later to be know as the Countess of Lovelace.

She found employment with the Count Luigi Frederico Menabrea who had written an article on Charles Babbage's analytical engine. Augusta's task was to translate the article from Italian to English.

She worked out most of the theoretical principles and programming behind Babbage's analytical engine and added her own notes and observations. She suggested that the bianry system (G) would be more suitable for storage than the decimal system (G). She also included looping as past of the design of the analytical system.

The title bestowed upon her is "first programmer" and she has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Defense, which named its most complex and far-reaching computer language "Ada."