On New Year's Eve, a small company in Canada was among the first to raise the alarm about an infectious disease outbreak. Its computer algorithm calculated where the virus might spread next.

A rare 175 year-old book containing the world's first computer algorithm by Ada Lovelace – mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron – has been sold at auction in England for £95,000 (US$125,000).

Ada Lovelace has been called the world’s first “computer programmer.” In the 1840s, she wrote the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine that existed only on paper.

It's one of six known copies published in 1843. The World's First Computer Program: A Rare Copy of Ada Lovelace's Algorithm Sells for $125,000 ...

The first primality tests using randomized algorithms (based on refinements to Fermat’s little theorem) ushered in a new era. Problem after problem turned out to be far easier to solve with randomness ...