The First Programmer

Who? Ada Lovelace
When? 1842
What? The first computer program ever written
How? Translating and revising a transcript of a French written lecture

Ada, Countess of Lovelace, 1840

Augusta Ada King was born in 1815 London, England. Lovelace became a mathematician and writer, most widely known for her work on Charles Babbage's "Analytical Engine" which was an early mechanical and general- purpose computer.

She comprised with first algorithm to be carried out by a machine in her notes on the engine. Lovelace is regarded as the first computer programmer because of this! [1]

Lovelace's algorithm from "Note G",  the first published computer program

Ada's notes are a milestone in the early history of computers and machines. In 1840 an Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea wrote up a lecture given by Babbage about his Analytical Engine, in French. Lovelace was given the task of translating this paper into English. 

Her notes included augmentation of the paper, with the assistance of Babbage himself. This took about a year to complete. Her notes were labelled in alphabetical order from A to G. In Note G the algorithm for the Engine was described to compute Bernoulli numbers. The Bernoulli numbers, Bn, are a sequence of signed, rational numbers that can be defined the the exponential generating function: [2] 

Unfortunately, the engine was never completed, so her code was never actually tested or ran.

She also developed an idea of the capability of machines to go further than basic calculations or number crunching. Babbage, among others, only focused on the abilities at the time. She looked at programming as "poetical science", which drew her to question the Analyitcal Engine, examining how a person or society relate to technology collaboratively. 

By Sophie Wicks 

References 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

[2] http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BernoulliNumber.html