Trademark A programming language developed at the behest of the US Department of Defense for use in real-time systems containing embedded computers. The name commemorates Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, who assisted Charles Babbage and has some claim to be the world’s first programmer.

The original version (now known as Ada 83) was designed by international competition, published in 1980, and adopted as an ANSI standard in 1983 and as an ISO standard in 1987. It incorporated ideas of modular programming, concurrent programming, and separate compilation to support the development of large programs. It also introduced the idea of a programming support environment (APSE) whereby program development tools are specified along with the language as an integral whole. However, the absence of agreement on specific tools has led to a number of different and incompatible support environments for Ada.

From 1986 use of Ada was made mandatory for US military applications (unless the contractor could show ‘good cause’ for a waiver), and several European countries have followed suit.

The language was revised in the early 1990s (when it was called Ada 9x) and adopted by ISO in 1995; this version is now known as Ada 95. In spite of differences in presentation, Ada 95 is virtually a superset of Ada 83, so almost all Ada-83 programs are valid Ada-95 programs. The core of Ada 95 includes facilities for object-oriented programming and facilities for synchronized access to shared data (protected objects). There are annexes for distributed systems, information systems, real-time systems, systems programming, safety and security, numerics, and interfaces to other languages. The current standard, Ada 2005, is a corrected and amended version of Ada 95.

http://www.adaic.org/ada-resources/standards/ada05/ The Ada 2005 Language Reference Manual