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Patriarchy

The Ada Lovelace myth

“Ada Lovelace was the first programmer” is not a settled fact. It is a disputed title.

Charles Babbage left dated program tables for the Analytical Engine in 1837, six years before Lovelace’s Notes. Computing historian Raúl Rojas identifies 26 Babbage programming examples from 1836–1841 and calls the 4 August 1837 table the first dated program.1

That does not erase Lovelace. Note G contains the Bernoulli-number calculation and a table of operations. She also understood the machine as more than a calculator: formalized relations could let it operate on objects beyond numbers; music was her example.2

The Bernoulli example was collaborative. In his 1864 autobiography Babbage said he proposed the problem and did the algebra, while Lovelace checked the work and found a serious error. Historian Thomas Misa argues that both made substantial contributions and credits Lovelace with the sequence of instructions.3

The clean conclusion is: Lovelace’s contribution was substantial; priority is disputed. Do not erase her work. Do not turn a historical argument into a slogan.

Sources

Section titled “Sources”
  1. Raúl Rojas, The First Computer Program, 2023.
  2. Ada Lovelace, “Notes by the Translator”, 1843.
  3. Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 1864; Thomas J. Misa, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and the Bernoulli Numbers, 2023.