Posted on 10/07/2014 10:44:54 AM PDT by Maceman
It is, and missing from the list but surely mentioned elsewhere is actress Hedy Lamarr, who co-invented a “Secret Communiations System” that laid the foundation for spread spectrum communications which is the backbone today of everything from mobile phones to wi-fi and bluetooth. She wasn’t a programmer or mathematician but had the inspiration and patented the idea decades before it was implemented in practical applications during the early 60s.
IBTH
Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. That’s it. Grace Hopper, yes. Ada Lovelace? That’s a stretch. But even if I concede her, that’s a whopping two women “pioneers” in computer science. Versus how many men?
It’s just another case of people who contributed very little trying to share in the glory. Kinda like all those muslim contributions to this country’s founding. Or all those inventions by blacks that make our lives better.
It was men who led this computer revolution. Overwhelmingly. Quit rewriting history to be PC.
Indeed, the mechanical computer makes me think of the Antikythera device, which may have been a really early computer (BC Greek).
Thanks for posting. Interesting subject and a great writer.
Even the history of the PC must be ... PC!
Grace Hopper's teams were all female. I had the privilege to work with "one of Grace's girls" when she was hired to review our department's management practices. She was the head of the FORTRAN validation testing team back in the beginning. We had a blast with that lady. She was off-the-scale smart and kept us laughing all of the time.
She wasn't very pretty, to be polite. She once laughingly told us that the rest of her team were all jealous of her because she was the prettiest one of all.
COBOL and FORTRAN both came into existence because of the efforts of all female teams. Learn to live with it.
It’s just another case of people who contributed very little trying to share in the glory. Kinda like all those muslim contributions to this country’s founding. Or all those inventions by blacks that make our lives better.
It was men who led this computer revolution. Overwhelmingly. Quit rewriting history to be PC.*
It reminds me of how the Soviets claimed to invent almost anything modern because somewhere along the line you could point to some obscure improvement made to a device by a Soviet scientist.
I'm sure that women have made a lot of contributions that we haven't heard of, but unfortunately for the PC storm troopers, most things seem to have been invented by white men. A disproportionate percentage of them seem to have been Scottish or had Scottish ancestry. Dunno why. A lot of days spent inside thinking because the damp days kept them in?
I was privileged to attend a gathering, meet, and hear Grace Hopper speak in Lubbock, TX in the mid ‘80s. What a brilliant mind she had. And what a commanding person who knew her stuff! As absolutely amazing personality! She took crap from nobody. The military lost a lot when she retired.
That is just so much bull shiite. You'd better learn a little bit before you spout off. Women like Grace Hopper contributed a lot to the computer revolution in the trenches, back when computers took up entire floors of buildings. A lot of men learned from her. Give credit where credit is due. Both men and women contributed. She was a true pioneer who actually did something without clinging to the coattails of someone else.
And the computers they programmed on? Wouldn’t have been much need for programmers if it hadn’t been for the work of MEN like Turing, Charles Babbage, Lee de Forrest, John Atanasoff, Clifford Berry, Herman Hollerith, William Shockley, and a host of others.
Go make your own history and quit stealing mens’.
...lot of insecure men on this thread. LOL.
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