A century before the dawn of the computer age, Ada Lovelace imagined the modern-day, general-purpose computer. It could be programmed to follow instructions, she wrote in 1843. It could not just ...

With this note, Lovelace had written the first computer program—for a machine that did not even exist, and was known only by description. Poetical science.

It’s widely accepted that the first computer program was written by Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, in 1842, although a device for which it was intended wasn’t built in her lifetime.

The world’s first computer program was written by Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician, in 1843 (an auspicious date for other reasons too). It was for a computer that did not exist. She was ...

Celebrated on what would be her 197th birthday, Ada Lovelace is widely credited as having written the first computer program. What did Lovelace's program do?