The First Computer Program
Mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage's code sketches were the first attempt to specify how to mechanize complex algorithms with a computer.
This article is a description of Charles Babbage’s first computer program, which he sketched out almost 200 years ago, in 1837. The Analytical Engine (AE), the computer for which the program was intended, did not actually exist; sadly, it was to remain unfinished. Only some portions of Babbage’s calculating machine were built during the lifetime of the English mathematician and inventor. Had it been completed, it would have been the world’s first computer.1,3 Of course, many algorithms had already been described before Babbage—for computing the greatest common divisor (GCD), for example—but Babbage’s code is the first attempt to specify how to mechanize complex algorithms with a computer. This was the heyday of the first industrial revolution, the age of steam engines and mechanization. Electricity, light bulbs, and telephones were still decades away, but the computer was taking shape on Babbage’s drawing board.
Babbage (1791-1871) developed detailed blueprints for the AE and sketched 26 programming examples between 1836 and 1841. The Science Museum in London has digitized the Babbage Archives so that today we can inspect existing diagrams of the Analytical Engine (with first drafts from 1835 on) and the 26 programming examples from the comfort of a home computer. In a 2021 paper titled “The Computer Programs of Charles Babbage,” I discuss the architecture of the AE and review some of its programs.5
