Inventors
Ada Lovelace
1815–1852 · First commentator of the general machine
England
Babbage designed engines that were never fully built. Lovelace, annotating a paper on the Analytical Engine, saw that a machine which follows a table of operations could manipulate symbols, not only numbers — even music, in principle. Software as an idea is older than electronics.
Why it mattered
- Separated the program from the brass.
- Warned that machines follow instructions; they do not originate meaning.
