as the title says. many people have told me that Ada Lovelace invented the first computer code. as far as i could find, she only invented some sort of calculation for Bernoulli (sorry for spelling) numbers.
seems to me like saying “i invented the cap to the water bottle, before the water bottle was invented”
did she do something else? am i missing something?
edit: ah! thank you everyone, i understand!!
In: Mathematics
She translated articles about the Analytical Engine and added notes to them. Here’s how the claim that she wrote the first program goes:
“Lovelace’s notes are important in the early history of computers, especially since the seventh one contained what many consider to be the first computer program—that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage’s personal notes from 1837 to 1840 contain the first programs for the engine”
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace)
History loves a good story. Einstein’s first wife never got any credit, for example. Everyone wants to hear the story about a “kind, old guy with crazy hair”. Nobody wants to hear about him abandoning his daughter, his first wife working with him on his papers and being a better physicist but never getting credit, etc.
If you want to go deeper on the Lovelace thing, here’s Stephen Wolfam’s detailed history from when he investigated the whole story himself:
[https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/)
To me, it is pretty clear Babbage himself wrote the first computer programs. Ada wrote one to solve Bernoulli numbers that was very well done. So, you could say she wrote the first really nice computer program but Babbage was the person who wrote the first one.
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