From Byron to the Ada Language

摘要

This is a slightly polished version of an extended version of a talk given by the author at a Symposium in Oxford to celebrate the 200th birthday of Ada Lovelace in December 2015. It starts with a few words about Byron and his Bear at Cambridge. This is followed by some remarks about Babbage who also went to Cambridge and was involved in an important event involving Brunei and Safety on the Railways. The main topic is a look at the events that led to the new programming language devised to satisfy the needs of the US Department of Defense and which was named Ada in recognition of the fact that Ada Lovelace was the world's first programmer. The polishing is in celebration of 40 years of the Ada User Journal.