lord byron developed the analytical engine which had features of present day computers.
who developed the analytical engine which had features of present day computers?
lord byron
ada lovelace was the first person to publish an algorithm intended to be executed by the first modern computer, the analytical engine created by charles babbage. as a result she is often regarded as the first computer programmer. lovelace was introduced to babbage's difference engine when she was 17. in 1840, she wrote to babbage and asked if she could become involved with his first machine. by this time, babbage had moved on to his idea for the analytical engine. a paper describing the analytical engine, "notions sur la machine analytique", published by l.f. menabrea, came to the attention of lovelace, who not only translated it into english, but corrected mistakes made by menabrea. babbage suggested that she expand the translation of the paper with her own ideas, which, signed only with her initials, aal, "synthesized the vast scope of babbage's vision." lovelace imagined the kind of impact of the analytical engine might have on society. she drew up explanations of how the engine could handle inputs, outputs, processing and data storage. she also created several proofs to show how the engine would handle calculations of bernoulli numbers on its own. the proofs are considered the first examples of a computer program. lovelace downplayed her role in her work during her life, for example, in signing her contributions with aal so as not be "accused of bragging."
women in computing
despite this groundwork, babbage's work fell into historical obscurity, and the analytical engine was unknown to builders of electro-mechanical and electronic computing machines in the 1930s and 1940s when they began their work, resulting in the need to re-invent many of the architectural innovations babbage had proposed. howard aiken, who built the quickly-obsoleted electromechanical calculator, the harvard mark i, between 1937 and 1945, praised babbage's work likely as a way of enhancing his own stature, but knew nothing of the analytical engine's architecture during the construction of the mark i, and considered his visit to the constructed portion of the analytical engine "the greatest disappointment of my life". the mark i showed no influence from the analytical engine and lacked the analytical engine's most prescient architectural feature, conditional branching. j. presper eckert and john w. mauchly similarly were not aware of the details of babbage's analytical engine work prior to the completion of their design for the first electronic general-purpose computer, the eniac.
analytical engine