Abstract
The Ada programming language was designed by the US military as a single language that would replace the plethora of programming languages employed by the US Department of Defense. It is named in honor of Lady Augusta Ada Lovelace, who was an English mathematician who collaborated with Charles Babbage on applications of the analytical engine. She described how the analytical engine could be programmed, and she wrote what is considered the world’s first computer program. She is therefore considered the first programmer.
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Notes
- 1.
It is likely that Lord Byron was the father of Elizabeth Medora Leigh, as he is believed to have had an incestuous affair with his half sister, Augusta Leigh. Byron’s former wife, Annabella Milbanke, told Ada that Leigh was her half sister and fathered by Byron. He was also the father of Clara Allegra Byron, the illegitimate daughter of Claire Clairmont (the stepsister of Mary Shelly). The child died of typhus aged five during Byron’s travels in Italy.
- 2.
There is some controversy as to whether this was entirely her own work or a joint effort with Babbage.
References
Ada, Augusta, Countess of Lovelace (1842) Sketch of the Analytic Engine invented by Charles Babbage. L.F. Menabrea, Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, October, 1842, No. 82 Translated by Ada, Augusta, Countess of Lovelace
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O’Regan, G. (2018). Ada Programming Language. In: The Innovation in Computing Companion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02619-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02619-6_3
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