While many may assume that the world's first computer algorithm was created recently, it was actually made in the 1800s! Click here to learn more!
Figure 1: A diagram of the algorithm that Ada Lovelace created to compute the Bernoulli numbers
Introduction
While most may believe that computer algorithms arose during the early 1900s (As that is when most computers started to appear), this is simply not the case. Many types of computers, including mechanical computers, existed even during the 1800s!
Who is Ada Lovelace?
Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, and is considered to be the "World's First Computer Programmer". She was born in 1815, to the poet Lord Byron, and the mathematician Lady Byron. During her childhood, she started to learn and develop an interest in calculus and science, which she studied extensively into her adulthood.
The First Computer Algorithm
As a result of her passion in these fields, she eventually became good friends with Charles Babbage, a prominent engineer at the time, who proposed the idea of the "Analytical Engine" - a mechanical general-purpose computer. Lovelace found a passion in this idea and realized that the Analytical Engine can do more than just be a calculator. And, in 1843, she published a diagram of an algorithm that could be used on Charles Babbage's computer (Figure 1), which could compute the Bernoulli numbers: a sequence of rational numbers prominent in calculus.
Personal opinion
Technology has been growing very fast and in just 200 years, we have already developed AI systems that could do things far beyond humans' ability. There is still so much for us to explore and I'm sure we will develop even more algorithms in the future.
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