In 1847, at the age of just twenty-seven, Ada Lovelace became the world’s first computer programmer—more than a century before the first computer was even built. This almost sounds like a myth, or the ...

Ada Lovelace Day, founded in 2009, is a time to celebrate the work of women in science, technology, engineering and math fields. She is considered influential enough that she was the subject of one of ...

These days, we back up every email we send without even thinking about it, and we look to our computers to tell us the weather rather than looking outside. Today’s teenagers will never know a world ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Someone encountering an “Analytical Engine” ...

Ada Lovelace, arguably the first computer programmer, was born 200 years ago today. She worked with Charles Babbage on one of the earliest computers in 1843. A portrait of Ada Lovelace by Margaret ...

Whether it’s an app, a software feature, or an interface element, programmers possess the magical ability to create something new out of virtually nothing. Just give them the hardware and a coding ...

A view of the Ada Lovelace exhibit at the Science Museum in London, England. A century before the first computer was developed, an Englishwoman named Ada Lovelace laid the theoretical groundwork for ...

Kooky-actress-it’s-ok-to-worship Zooey Deschanel has apparently been cast as Ada Lovelace in a new film chronicling her life, Enchantress of Numbers. Lovelace, who died in 1852, was an English woman ...

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 ...