The First Computer Program

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.