Ada Lovelace is largely credited with having written the first computer algorithm. She is also recognized as being the first to understand how a mechanical calculator could actually be used for computing, how it “might act upon other things besides number.” Born from the union between poet Lord Byron and mathematician Anne Isabella Milbanke in […]

Antikythera Mechanism

In 1900, a group of sponge divers found the Antikythera wreck off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the wreckage was the oldest example of an analogue computer – a hand-powered orrery, or mechanical model of our solar system that predicts the positions and motions of the planets and moon, including eclipses. […]

Did you know? Capsule-sized circuits that can be swallowed are being developed to monitor the level of fat in obese people and to make them feel satiated. Also being developed is a chip that, like tattoo ink, can be injected under the skin in a finger, for example, to unlock something just by pointing. Progress […]

Ada Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron, Lord Byron’s daughter, was the first to suggest a computer program, back in 1842. She was a formidable mathematician and writer. When translating Italian engineer and mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Charles Babbage’s proposed general-purpose machine, the Analytical Engine, Lovelace added her own notes, which contain a method for […]