Ada is a high-level computer language written for the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1970s to replace its then-standard language, COBOL. In 1991 the U.S. Congress mandated that all military software be written in Ada. Created at the French company Cii-Honeywell Bull, Ada was inspired by highly "readable" modular languages such as Pascal. It also contains coding features found in low-level assembly languages that can be machine-processed in "real time." Thus Ada reconciles the conflicting computer language goals of human readability and processing efficiency. Ada is widely used in the aerospace industry and is gaining ground in the artificial intelligence community. It was named after British programming pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815-52).