Charles Babbage worked with Ada Lovelace

Charles Babbage mentored the mathematician Ada Lovelace and set up her tutoring at the University of London. Ada Lovelace first met Charles Babbage, a mathematician who had created a calculator known as the Difference Engine, in 1833. The Difference Engine prototype served as inspiration for Lovelace, who later became Babbage's lifelong companion. The Analytical Engine, a new project that Babbage had in mind, was a considerably more sophisticated engine.

Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea wrote a paper about the Analytical Engine in French in 1843, which Lovelace translated. Thousands of words of her own notes were also added to the document by her. Lovelace understood that the Analytical Engine was capable of performing a lengthy series of mathematical calculations. Computer historians consider her description of how to calculate Bernoulli numbers as an example of one such sequence to be the first computer program.

She even suggested that the Analytical Engine might be able to manipulate objects other than numbers, such musical notes. "We may say most correctly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns exactly as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves," she wrote of Babbage's innovation.