Iqra Abbasi
Figure 1: Ada Lovelace, https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/ada-lovelace-day-2/
The official computer languages pioneered in the 1950s with the creation of Fortran I, Cobol and Algol (Fairhead) were thought to be milestones in understanding the personal computer, more specifically the operational principle of a Central Processing Unit with memory. However, while many pay homage to Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, the first ‘programmer’ generally agreed upon is Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52).
Ada Lovelace was born to Rmantic poet Lord Byron and his wife, Annabelle. They separated when Ada was five months old, and as a result, her mother kept Ada busy at a young age with various tutors in mathematics, sciences, music and French (Charman-Anderson). Ada’s life took a turn when at 17 she was introduced to Charles Babbage, a professor in mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Babbage invited Ada to come to see his small-scale computing machine called the Difference Engine, commonly referred to as the Difference Machine. Ada, determined to understand how the machine worked, asked Babbage to look at the blueprints of the machine.