Ada Lovelace

A stipple engraving of Ada Lovelace. During the 1820s, British mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage proposed an ‘Analytical Engine’ that could perform mathematical calculations when fed instructions and numbers using punched cards. However, it was Ada Lovelace, Babbage’s forward-thinking contemporary, who suggested that the numbers processed by a computer could represent any kind of data, not limited to just numerical calculations. Ada’s idea illustrates the birth of the concept of computing programming.