ADA Lovelace, the Founder of Coding

By Daniel Ein Alshaeba, 2025

Published 10/13/2024

Chances are, you’re probably reading this article through a computer screen.  There is no shortage of famous people tied to the devices we use today.  Reading this through a Chromebook? Thank Larry Page.  FaceTiming your friends later today?  Steve Jobs made that possible.  Already sunk four hours into Instagram Reels and are well into your fifth? Well, then you have both yourself and Mark Zuckerberg to blame.  That being said, there are still countless people whose contributions to computing have been more or less forgotten to history.  Unfortunately, this is the case with Ada Lovelace, who is considered by some to be the founder of coding.  

Lovelace’s childhood was tumultuous, to say the least.  She was born on December 10, 1815 in London, England as the only legitimate child of Lord Byron– a famous poet– and Anna Isabella Milbanke– an educational reformer and abolitionist.  However, after just five weeks, Byron and Milbanke separated, and Byron made no attempt to gain custody of Lovelace.  Lovelace did not have a close relationship with either parent. Byron died when Lovelace was eight, and she was not able to see his family portrait until she was twenty; her mother often left Lovelace with her grandmother, and referred to Lovelace as “it” in letters.  Lovelace also became sick often; after a measles infection in 1829, she was left paralyzed for a period of time.  

By the time she was seventeen, though, it was clear that Lovelace’s bleak upbringing would not weaken her affinity for math. She was privately educated in science and mathematics by various experts, including Augustus De Morgan.  This interest in mathematics would propel Lovelace into the world of early computing.  In 1933, she met English mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, who invited her to see the prototype of his Difference Engine, which was one of the first mechanical calculators.  Lovelace would continue to work with Babbage as he proposed his newest invention: the Analytical Engine.  Unlike the Difference Engine, which was strictly used for calculations, the Analytical Engine was intended to be a general purpose computer capable of recognizing and decoding rule sets.  However, while parts of the engine were able to be constructed over time, the invention was never fully completed.  

One of Lovelace’s most influential contributions was the creation of the first computer program.  In 1842, Lovelace was commissioned to translate Babbage’s 1840 lecture to the University of Turin into English.  Alongside this translation, however, Lovelace included additional notes.  In the last of the notes, Note G, Lovelace described an algorithm which would have allowed the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers.  This algorithm served as the predecessor of modern software, as the first published computer program.  

Lovelace has been honored for her contributions to computer science in both the United States and United Kingdom.  In the United States, the United States Department of Defense established the programming language Ada in 1980, named in honor of Lovelace. The language has been routinely updated and remains an international technical standard for computing.  Eighteen years later, in 1998, the British Computer Society established the Lovelace Medal, the UK’s most prestigious award for computing. In addition, Ada Lovelace Day, which takes place on the second Tuesday of October, began as an annual event in 2009 to gain recognition for women involved in STEM.