The Theoretical Origins and Earliest Languages

Charles Babbage designed the Analytical Engine in the 1830s, a mechanical general-purpose computer never completed in his lifetime despite partial funding from the British government. Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and the daughter of Lord Byron, translated and annotated an article about the Engine written by Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea in 1843, and her notes included what is widely regarded as the first published algorithm intended for execution by a machine: a method for computing Bernoulli numbers. She also speculated that the machine could manipulate symbols beyond numbers, foreseeing applications such as music or art. For this she is often called the first computer programmer, although some historians note that Babbage himself had already sketched similar procedures for his own use.