The first programmable computer—if it were built—would have been a gigantic, mechanical thing clunking along with gears and levers and punch cards. That was the vision for Analytical Engine devised by ...

To most people, the phrase “electronic computer” conjures up a baffling maze of wires, transistors, magnetic tapes, punch cards, and the like, which can somehow or other be used to solve problems of ...

Ada Lovelace, daughter of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Annabella Milbanke, became the world's first programmer in 1843 with her algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Learning to ...

Many fields of science have a foundational document: Isaac Newton’s Principia for the physics of classical mechanics, for example, or Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species for evolutionary biology ...

The second Tuesday in October is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate and encourage the accomplishments of women in science, technology, and engineering. But who was Ada Lovelace? She wrote the first ...

The bicentenary of Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, heralds the critical reassessment of a remarkable figure in the history of Victorian science. Ada Lovelace (as she is now known) was 27 years ...

A rare 175 year-old book containing the world's first computer algorithm by Ada Lovelace – mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron – has been sold at auction in England for £95,000 (US$125,000). Only ...