“Kathleen Booth, who has died aged 100, co-designed of one of the world’s first operational computers and wrote two of the earliest books on computer design and programming,” the Telegraph wrote this week. “She was also credited with the invention of the first assembly language, a programming language designed to be readable by users.” In 1946 she joined a team of mathematicians under Andrew Booth at Birkbeck College undertaking calculations for the scientists working on the X-ray crystallography images which contributed to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA…. To help the number-crunching involved Booth had embarked on building a computing machine called the Automatic Relay Calculator or ARC, and in 1947 Kathleen accompanied him on a six-month visit to Princeton University, where they consulted John von Neumann, who had developed the idea of storing programs in a computer. On their return to England they co-wrote General Considerations in the Design of an All Purpose Electronic Digital Computer, and went on to make modifications to the original ARC to incorporate the lessons learnt. Kathleen devised the ARC assembly language for the computer and designed the assembler.Source: Inoreader – Computing Pioneer Who Invented the First Assembly Language Dies at Age 100