Ada Lovelace (full name: Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace) is considered the first computer programmer. Around the age of 17, Lovelace met and befriended Charles Babbage, a mathematician and inventor. She was later asked to translate an article about the analytical engine, which handled more complex calculations. In her notes, Lovelace described how codes composed of letters, symbols, and numbers could be created for the device to handle. Her contributions to the field of computer science went undiscovered until the 1950s, when they were published in Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines in 1953. In 1980, the U.S. Department of Defense named a newly developed computer language “Ada,” after Lovelace.