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- Meet Ada Lovelace – The World’s First Computer Programmer
Meet Ada Lovelace – The World’s First Computer Programmer
In the 1800s!
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Before smartphones, tablets, and computers that talk back to you…
Before the internet, video games, or even electricity in most homes…
There was Ada Lovelace — a brilliant woman with a big imagination who wrote the very first computer program in history.
And get this… she did it in the 1800s.
🧠 A Girl Who Loved Numbers and Imagination
Ada was born in 1815 in England. Her full name was Augusta Ada Byron — and her dad was the famous poet Lord Byron. But Ada didn’t grow up writing poems. She was obsessed with math, science, and machines.
People around her said girls shouldn’t study those things.
Ada said: “Watch me.”
By age 12, she had designed a flying machine powered by steam and wings.
And by her 20s, she met a man named Charles Babbage — who was working on a huge machine he called the Analytical Engine.
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💻 What’s the Analytical Engine?
It was basically a giant calculator made of gears — like a computer… but before computers even existed.
Most people thought it was just a fancy math machine.
But Ada? She saw something no one else did.
She said this machine could be taught to do more than math — it could follow instructions to solve any problem. She wrote notes and algorithms (step-by-step directions), including one for how the machine could calculate special math patterns.
That’s right: she wrote code before computers were even built.
That’s why many call her the first computer programmer ever.
💬 She Was Way Ahead of Her Time
Ada imagined computers could one day:
Make music
Help people solve complex problems
Work on things humans couldn’t do alone
In her time, no one believed her.
Today, she’s considered a visionary — someone who saw the future before it arrived.
🌟 What Can We Learn from Ada?
Just because something doesn’t exist yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Imagination + logic is a superpower.
Girls can rock math, science, and tech — and always have.
Ada once said:
“That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.”
And wow, was she right.
So next time you play a game, search something online, or code a project, give a little thanks to Ada — the woman who dreamed up computers before computers were real.