Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace (1815 - 1852) was the innovator who first described basic programming concepts such as the conditional jump, the loop, and the subroutine.

Ada's life was series of unusual circumstances that would eventually lead to her writing the world's first computer program. Shortly after Ada was born, her mother separated from Ada's father, the famous poet Lord Byron. Needless to say, Ada's mother did not want her daughter growing up to be like her father. To limit any poetical influences that Ada might feel, her mother encouraged her to study science and mathematics, which was a highly unusual among other young girls in that time period.

When Ada was seventeen she met Mary Somerville, a woman scientist whose works were used at Cambridge. Mary Somerville encouraged Ada's mathematical and scientific studies. It was through Mary Somerville that Ada met Charles Babbage, designer of the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was the first general purpose computing device to be designed. Sadly financial and legal issues kept the machine from being built during Babbage's lifetime.

Ada Lovelace was still inspired by Babbage's ideas. In 1842-1843 she translated a detailed paper about the Analytical Engine. Her extensive annotations are even longer than the original paper, and form an extensive description of the capabilities of the Analyitical Engine. They also define the basic structure of programming.

This paper is a must read for any programmer or hacker. In it Ada shows that the Analytical Engine, originally designed for mathematics, could be used for logic and flow control processes as well:

The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine.

This idea envisioned by Ada Lovelace, that a machine could manipulate symbols in accordance with rules and that a number could represent something other than a quantity are part of the transition that Lovelace described: from calculation to computation.

Ada Lovelace died at age 36, and her brilliant scientific ideas died with her. It wasn't until 1953 that her original translated paper and extensive annotations were republished and made available for the world to read again.

Without a doubt Ada Lovelace was the first programmer, and her efforts as a hacker and innovator have been honored many times down through history, from the Ada programming language created by the US Department of Defense, to Microsoft's use of her image on hologram stickers.